


Born Weapons

by Gallyrat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Friendship, Lovecraftian, Military, Minor Original Character(s), Politics, Religion, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallyrat/pseuds/Gallyrat
Summary: I am the empty vessel. I am the clay soldier in which the will of fire burns. (AU) (Reboot of Shinobi: Team 7)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	1. Koji Naruto

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc I  
** **Face the Future  
** **Chapter I  
** **Koji Naruto**

"Each morning you must turn your eyes anew to the rising sun, or risk ensnarement by the shadows of yesterday."  
-Senju Hashirama  
First Hokage

**The First**

He is the first Hokage, and he is like the sun.

As a child, Senju Hashirama is gentle. He is a child of war, like all children of his day, but despite the pain and death and misery that define his life he believes in something softer – a grace and kindness long lost to the world. He dreams of gardens, and of lazy Uposatha afternoons, and the strength of this dream radiates from him like a light in the darkness. He walks, and the trees and flowers bow before him. He speaks, and men and women and children clamber for the chance to die at his side. He is gentle and loving to his friends, quick with a smile and a laugh, but when provoked his rage is terrible to behold. His enemies fall before him, and their corpses feed the forests that sprout in his wake.

He is still only a boy when made Lord of the Senju clan, but those who watch the sages smear paint across his face can feel the importance of the moment. "This is the end of history," they whisper amongst themselves. For he is Senju Hashirama, the blood of the Sage, who gave life and light and shade, and those who follow him recognize some trace of God in man.

He leads his people against their most ancient enemies, cutting a bloody swathe across the lonely corner of the continent the Senju call home. A dozen clans unite against him, terror making the unthinkable a reality, but even ten thousand swords cannot cut him. Those who lay down their weapons find a home under his banner – those who fight, die. And for the first time in living memory, there is peace. War rages endlessly across the continent, but does not touch the Senju lands.

It is not to last. The Uchiha, butchers of the west, come. The Uchiha, they of the bloody eyes and bloody hands, come. The Uchiha, wielders of the ancient flame, come.

The Uchiha, descendants of the Sage, who gave life and light and steel, come.

Senju! Uchiha! The crimson eyes of Uchiha Madara settle on the peaceful land Hashirama has created, and the people cower, for they are afraid. But Senju Hashirama is not afraid. He wears the marks of the Sage on his face, cherry red paint on nut brown skin, and some even whisper that he is the Sage's second coming. And when he raises his hand, and the forest bends to his will, those who follow him recognize God in man.

Senju! Uchiha! Brothers once, according to the most ancient of legends, now separated by a distance and hatred that drives them to war. Armies clash for days without rest, men and women and children dying in the brutal summer heat, until the rivers are choked with blood. The land in the shade of the great mountain is burned, and burned again.

And then, the Nine Tailed Fox.

Senju! Uchiha! The roar of the beast rekindles the flame of brotherhood, thought long extinguished, and together they stand against the Fox. And when they defeat the beast, seal it away, their brotherhood is consecrated with ink and blood.

The seasons pass. A village stands in the shadow of the great mountain, where the land was once torched by war. He wears the hat to mark his station. His face adorns the mountain, and all who see it recognize God in man. Across the continent others scramble to imitate him, building their own villages. Wearing their own hats. But he is the first, and he is the greatest of them. They fear him.

The fear cannot last forever, but that does not stop him dreaming. He believes in something softer – a grace and kindness no longer lost to the world. When his hair greys and his bones creak, he relinquishes his power peacefully to sit in the gardens, to rest on Uposatha, to play with the children. He carries great hope for this new generation, the hope that they will shed the trappings and prejudices of the old and embrace something compassionate and new.

For he sees the end in his dreams. The unmaking, the clouds fat with blood. It will come soon, as it must. Their world is a brutal, terrifying cycle. His dearest friend is gone. Uchiha Madara, the only man who could truly regard Hashirama as an equal, saw his own visions of the future, and set out to the wild lands of the north. He travelled beyond the great mountains, seeking something that could save them all. He would never return.

Hashirama dies in the last months of the Peace of the Founding, the peace he created. He dies in his bed, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He is not frightened, he tells them, not sad. He is happy for the chance to see his wife again, and his friends and family who have passed. He fears for their future, but does not tell them. The end he saw will be a long time in coming.

He was the first Hokage, and he was like the sun.

**The Second**

He is the second Hokage, and he is like the ocean.

Senju Tobirama is not his brother. He is a child of war, comfortable with the feel of steel biting flesh. Relishing it, even, although he hides this, for fear of his brother's disapproval. But though a child of war, he finds a place for himself in the Peace of the Founding. It is Hashirama that leads their clan into the new age, but it is Tobirama that makes the dream of peace into a reality. It is he who builds the bridges and paves the roads. It is he who carves his brother's face into the mountain. It is he who travels to the neighboring clans and offers them a place in the Land of Fire – in its great capital, Konohagakure. It is his brother they bow to, but it is Tobirama they obey. It is Tobirama who sets the standard that the other Shinobi villages emulate.

But Tobirama is not his brother, and he does not dream Hashirama's dreams. The old hatred is strong within him, and stronger when he thinks the name Uchiha. His brother pleads with him to leave the past behind, to look instead to the future the Uchiha could help them build. But whenever Tobirama looks out across the land he calls home, he sees fire, and the rivers choked with blood.

When he is given the hat, the Uchiha protest. The Senju prepare for battle, and for a moment it looks as though the grand experiment of Konohagakure will perish in war – that Hashirama's dream was a delusion, despite the strength of his conviction. Tobirama despairs, but he cannot stem the hatred within himself, no more than a man could stem the tide.

And then Madara steps forward, to calm his kin. And though Tobirama's hate is a thousand generations deep, he lives the rest of his life knowing that his brother's dream owes its life to Uchiha Madara.

Tobirama does not, cannot, forgive, but he is a fair ruler nonetheless. He is a man of principle, and there is nothing more principled than putting aside personal feelings for the good of the many. He maintains the peace his brother created, and encourages the whispers of divinity that occasionally reach his ear. There is nothing like the threat of God's wrath to dissuade one's enemies.

He takes many students, for he knows that what his brother says is true – that the children are the hope for the future. But he holds no lofty dreams of gardens, or lazy Uposatha afternoons. The village needs the children, if it is to survive another war – and there will be another. War is life's only inevitability.

Mere months after Senju Hashirama passes from the world, the war comes again. Tobirama gives himself to it freely. Enemies come and enemies fall against the inexorable tide, all consuming, all encompassing. But he is only one man, and he is old. He dies as he lived, relishing the feel of steel biting flesh.

He was the second Hokage, and he was like the ocean.

**The Third**

He is the third Hokage, and he is like the flame.

Nara Shokkou is the greatest of Tobirama's students, a cunning tactician and master manipulator. His tongue dances with the same speed and skill as his blade, and he wins as many wars at the table as he does on the battlefield. His shadow, freed from its pedestrian ties, strikes at foes halfway across the world. The First Great War is a grueling test for a still nascent Konohagakure, and it is Nara Shokkou who shepherds the village through it.

But he is not a gentle man, and in his brilliance flickers something harsh and hungry. Shokkou knows the price of peace, and he is more than willing to pay it. Konohagakure expands with steel and fire, tightening its control, making sure it will never again be compromised. His blade tastes the blood of any who would dare stand in his way, and battered and broken as his village may be it stands strong. But when he closes the door and shuts out the world, he does not stand strong. He can feel himself slipping further and further into his own mind, until he does not fight it anymore. He does not want to fight it anymore. He dreams of bloodshed and power and clouds fat with blood.

He expands the powers of the Hokage, aggressively. Perhaps too aggressively. Though Fire is feared across the continent, there are rumblings of discontent amongst the Shinobi clans. Even the Nara are afraid of the man Shokkou is becoming, ruthless and increasingly feral. Though Fire is powerful, its enemies gather like hungry sharks, waiting for their greatest foe to tear itself apart. Shokkou senses weakness and cracks down, calling for a new westward crusade. His shadow murders the Tsuchikage in his own home, and then moves on to the man's family. They do not finish cleaning the children out of the carpets for weeks.

It is the last straw. Iwagakure, the sleeping bear, is roused, and its fury is terrible to behold. It is not a Great War, not yet, but Sunagakure is snapping eagerly at Stone's heels, hungry for the scraps it can claim for itself. Kumogakure, reluctantly peaceful in the best of times, howls for battle. Kirigakure, isolated, waits for the dice to fall where they may - but their leaders speak of blood in the water.

Shokkou is killed in the night, by his own ANBU. No fearsome blade, no honeyed words, no murderous shadow can save him in the end. Stone Shinobi stalk the streets of Konohagakure, and the village is choked with blood. Shokkou dies with curses on his lips – he dies knowing that all is lost for his home.

He was the third Hokage, and he was like the flame.

**The Fourth**

She is the fourth Hokage, and she is like the thunder.

Hyuga Hinata's coronation is a cruel joke. She inherits a village burning, a measly handful of Shinobi already broken by the fall of their home. Her own children die in the line of duty not hours before she takes the hat, but Hinata does not mourn. Mourning is for weak. She is a woman of action, and she is strong.

She does not hesitate for a moment. Two hours after her coronation she leads a raiding party into the heart of occupied Konohagakure, to cut the head off the Stone snake. Her eyes see through all deceptions and defenses, and none are quick enough to stop her from exacting her vengeance on those that stole her home and children.

It is impossible to imagine Hinata as a Hokage of peacetime. She is natural in war, a furious storm on the battlefield, and her power scatters her foes. Fire's enemies feared Nara Shokkou, but they hold an almost reverent terror towards Hyuga Hinata. Many say she single-handedly saved Fire from annexation, and it is difficult to call them wrong. Certainly it is she who leads the charge to save the Inuzuka horde at the Battle of Han's Plateau, the same horde that ultimately drive the Wind Shinobi back to the desert they call home. Certainly it is she who challenges the Fifth Raikage to single combat and wins, shattering the man's organs with the lightest of touches. Like thunder after lightning she appears where there is a threat to Fire, leaving only devastation in her wake. And yet when the Second Great War finally comes to a close, she does not make the mistake of generals before her and returns home, to pick up the pieces of the village that now belongs to her.

And though it is impossible to imagine Hinata as a Hokage of peacetime, somehow she manages. She rebuilds with the same relentless fury with which she fights, demanding nothing less than perfection from those beneath her. When the Uchiha and Senju nearly come to blows, she is there to diffuse the tension with harsh words and threatening glares. When the Akimichi plan to make a break for potentially greener pastures, she is there to remind them why it would be unwise to make an enemy of Konohagakure. She holds the village together with implied threats and sheer force of will, and though she is never truly loved by the people she leads, she is respected. It is a respect that is needed, after the Third. The balance of Fire is delicate, and one wrong shift of weight could bring the whole thing crashing down. And yet, miraculously, it only grows stronger. Hinata visits the graves of her children every day, but never mourns. Mourning is for the weak. She is a woman of action, and she is strong.

Konohagakure is not what it once was, but it still stands. Hinata seeks wisdom from the Hokage that came before her. She immerses herself in the amateur poetry of Hashirama, the philosophy of Tobirama, even the scribbled diaries of Shokkou. She recognizes that those men all had something that she herself lacks – the ability to inspire, to convince people to lay down their lives with nothing but a short word or a smile. It is not a skill that can be learned, she concludes, but a gift that one inherits by the grace of the gods themselves. Hyuga Hinata is not a particularly religious woman, but she gives her offerings to family's ancient pantheon nonetheless. She wonders, before she sleeps, if Amaterasu smiles upon her, or if he is merely a figment of his worshippers collective imaginations. Perhaps the Senju are right, and Hashirama truly was the reincarnation of their Sage.

She does not share such thoughts with anyone, not even her husband. For all her strength, Hinata is unwilling to face the possible consequences of her doubt.

The years pass. Hinata's hair greys, her bones creak. Talks of her retirement are at hand. Hyuga Hinata does not wish to retire. Senju Hashirama is the only Kage to have done so, and she respects the honor as his alone. She oversees the appointment of a successor, a Senju girl who draws others to her as if it is the most natural thing in the world, and then takes her husband and two Jonin with her into the frozen North, to seek enlightenment. When there is no word after three months, she is declared dead.

She was the fourth Hokage, and she was like the thunder.

**The Fifth**

She is the fifth Hokage, and she is like the moon.

Senju Ariko is beautiful, the celestial rose of her clan. Senju Ariko is dangerous, the bloody thorn of Konohagakure. In appearance she takes after her ancestor, the second Hokage. Her features are sharp and defined, her hair snow white, her eyes piercing blue. But in ability she takes after the second's brother, the revered first. Not since the legendary Hashirama has a Senju commanded their bloodline so effortlessly that their mere presence causes flowers to sprout, unbidden, from the earth. And not since Hashirama has a Hokage drawn their subjects in so easily, with a smile and a laugh.

But Ariko is not Hashirama, a fact of which she is painfully aware. She fears for the day she will have to lead Fire into war. She is a powerful Shinobi and a skilled fighter, but that is different from being a general, and Ariko cannot face the possibility of failure. She is not Senju Hashirama – she is a pale reflection of his light, and a reflection cannot possibly live up to the legend.

It is that very fear that makes Senju Ariko the most powerful force for peace of her time. Terrified of war, she throws all of her considerable diplomatic prowess into preventing it. Fire enjoys a golden age of prosperity, and for once there is no end in sight. The years pass, and Senju Ariko grows only more beautiful.

But war is life's only inevitability. There comes a time in every Kage's reign where they must take a stand – when they must say no more, and bare their blade to draw the blood of their enemies. Senju Ariko cannot do this, a fact of which Kumogakure, still craving vengeance for their murdered Fifth, is all too aware.

Fire's northern territories burn as Lightning sweeps down from the mountains. The people cry for protection. Ariko takes to the table, demanding peace, negotiations.

Kumogakure does not stop. It marches ever southward, taking all it wants, destroying what it does not. The people cry out for protection. Ariko's advisors urge her to call the Jonin, but still she hesitates. Peace can be found, she insists.

Kumogakure does not agree. The people cry out no more.

A meeting is called. The ROOT Commander, Inuzuka Mokuba, believes action must be taken. Ariko's advisors declare this sentiment treason. Both sides are on edge and committed fully to their cause – eventually, the arguments erupt into physical violence. It is the closest Konohagakure has ever come to civil war. The Reds, supporting the Hokage, gather at one end of the village. The Greens, supporting Mokuba, gather at the other. Ariko, face to face with the imminent collapse of the village she has worked so hard to maintain, stands in the middle.

History tells us that it was a Lightning Shinobi who cut Ariko down, left her broken and bleeding in the streets. If this is true, it is terribly convenient for Konohagakure. With Ariko dead, the village consolidates under the regency of Inuzuka Mokuba, and calls the Jonin. The Third Great War has begun.

She was the fifth Hokage, and she was like the moon.

**The Interim**

Still fractured from the day of Red and Green, the noble clans cannot decide a successor amongst themselves. It is twenty-two years before another wears the hat.

**The Sixth**

He is the sixth Hokage, and he is like the Earth.

Sarutobi Hiruzen is the favored student of Senju Ariko, and in many ways he never recovers from his master's death. In many ways, he never recovers from staring down his best and oldest friend, ready to fight and kill a man he considers his brother – simply because of the colors they aligned themselves with. But though he is never the man he was before the Day of Red and Green, Sarutobi Hiruzen is not broken. He is strong, resilient, and he throws himself into war to prove this to those who doubt his skills in battle.

He accrues many names as he leads the march on Kumogakure. The Oni of the East. The Bloody Ape. The Professor, for it seems there is not a single technique he has not learned and mastered. And as he stands among the ruins of what was once Kumogakure, who can say they are wrong?

He returns to Konohagakure three years before the end of the war, a changed man. When the Hokage's hat is placed on his head, few can argue that he is not meant for the position. He is a strong leader, a powerful warrior, and a loving father to his men. He has razed the cities of his enemies and trained the most powerful Shinobi team Konohagakure has ever seen, the now legendary Sanin. By the time the Third Great War is over, Konohagakure is once again feared.

Hiruzen spends his time as Hokage focusing on the poor and disenfranchised – though those who oppose him, for there are plenty, are quick to point out that his policies always seem to make the Hokage's office more powerful than it was before. Despite his distaste for politicking, he proves a quick study at navigating the halls of power. Within a decade his enemies are crushed or scattered.

He hides this ruthless streak beneath the veneer of the kindly old grandfather, fond of jokes and women half his age – but those who have seen him in battle will never forget the steel beneath the surface. He keeps up his studies even as his hair greys and his bones creak, determined to be capable of defending his home until the end.

Remarkably, his reign does not end in blood. Not since Hashirama has the title of Hokage been handed down peacefully, and so onlookers watch Sarutobi Hiruzen place the red and white hat on the head of a young boy from a civilian clan, they can feel the importance of the moment. "This is the end of history," they whisper amongst themselves.

For he is Sarutobi Hiruzen, the man who would be Hokage twice.

**The Seventh**

He is the seventh Hokage, and he is like the lightning.

Namikaze Minato is one of the endless horde of civilian children who enroll in the Shinobi corps each year, desperate for a better life for themselves and their children. Precious few are lucky enough to make it past the lowly rank of Genin – it is nearly unheard of for one to take a prized Jonin slot. And yet that is precisely where Minato sets his sights.

And as the years pass, Minato excels. He breezes through the rank of Genin with unchallenged confidence, shattering village records without seeming to try. When Shinobi from a minor clan pay a visit to remind him of his place, he sends them back to their family with broken fingers and missing teeth. When Shinobi from a noble clan try the same, blood paints the streets of Konohagakure.

Under different circumstances, Minato's career might have ended there. But war, life's only inevitability, beckons from far to the East, and Konohagakure needs every Shinobi it can get. It is in the Land of Water, during long patrols and unbearably muggy days, that he earns himself the Jonin rank he so desires – and the place in the history books he never expected. The Flying Thunder God is the first true space-time ninjutsu, and it makes Minato a terror unlike anything that has come before. He is there, and not, and there, and not, until the entire battlefield is littered with the corpses of those who dared oppose him. He is the Yellow Flash, and all who see him recognize death in man.

Minato thinks the whole thing is a little overblown. It is not until the middle of the Fourth Great War, when hardened Iwagakure Shinobi are fleeing at the sight of him, that he realizes how much his reputation precedes him. He dyes his hair for a while before his teacher convinces him that reputation is just as powerful a tool as any ninjutsu. When the war comes to a close, and the Tsuchikage throws his blade at Minato's feet, it seems impossible he will not wear the hat. Sarutobi Hiruzen's hair is grey, and his bones creak terribly. He wishes nothing more than to dote on his children and grandchildren.

And so Konohagakure is in celebration for two reasons – the end to the nine-year war and the crowning of a new Hokage. It is a new day for Fire, the people decide – a day of peace and prosperity not seen since Hashirama. Enemy Shinobi fear to even cross the border into Fire, for it said that he can see any intrusion, and be there in a flash.

A firebrand, some call him, a revolutionary who somehow found himself on the throne, Minato continues to solidify the power of the Hokage, sponsoring the creation of new Shinobi clans to check the power of the nobles. And though the more conservative amongst the village often disagree with their new Hokage, none can bring themselves to truly dislike him.

And then, the Nine Tailed Fox.

It is the fire and pain and hatred of a thousand thousand years of war. The Shinobi of Konohagakure throw themselves against the beast, but there is no Madara, no Hashirama to shelter them from its wrath. Each of its tails is a hurricane, each of its steps an earthquake, it is fury and malice and unbound rage given form and it sweeps over the village like a vengeful storm. It is contemptuous of their attempts to bind it, corral it, and those who attempt are crushed beneath the physical force of its presence. When Minato takes the field, Konohagakure has been devastated. The Fox turns its attention to him but he is like the lightning, there and not, there and not. By the time the sun comes up, the Fox is gone. The seventh lies still on the ground, cold, having done by himself what both Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had struggled to do. It is a sign, the people agree, but what it means they cannot say. Does the Fox herald the end times for Konohagakure, completing the circle that began with the village's founding? Or has the cycle simply begun anew, with one God traded for the next?

He was the seventh Hokage, and he was like the lightning.

**The Eighth**

He is the eighth Hokage, and in his dreams he is the last.

-OOO-

Naruto dashed across the rooftops of Konohagakure, lungs aching, heart pounding, limbs shaking. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to scream at himself.

Who the hell is late to their own Chunin evaluation?

The village spread out beneath him, roofs of brightly painted tile occasionally disrupted by swathes of green forest – like leafy lily pads floating idly in a multicolored pond. It was a sight that was no less beloved for its familiarity, but Naruto had neither the time nor the energy to properly appreciate the beauty of his home.

He looked up to find the military tower in the distance and swore, redoubling his efforts. He had woken ten minutes ago and was still really only half dressed – but he couldn't spare even a moment to button his green flak jacket. His evaluation had already begun. He shouldn't have stayed out so late last night. He should've camped out at the damn tower.

He continued to curse himself as he dashed across Konoahagakure's rooftops, impossibly long leaps carrying him from one building to the next. Green tiles, then, red, then blue, then yellow, flashed under his feet as he ran, his shoes slamming against hardened clay in an irregular rhythm. The village had sprung up piecemeal in the two hundred years since the founding, and the architecture held neither rhyme nor reason. Where outward expansion had proved impractical, upward expansion had been adopted instead, new buildings stacked haphazardly atop the old. One such vertical expansion greeted him now and Naruto screamed as he leapt, funneling chakra to his hands and feet. The chakra held them fast to wall in front of him, and in half a moment he had scrambled up the sheer surface like a lizard.

From there, he was able to hop over to a bundle of telegraph wires that crisscrossed the streets below. The wires provided welcome relief from the constant up and down, up and down of rooftop running, but it meant Naruto had to spend precious concentration watching where he placed his feet.

He spared a glance up at the tower. At the speed he was moving, how was it taking so long to get bigger?

He howled in frustration, startling a group of children playing marbles in the street below, then forced himself to move faster. Buildings blurred by. He heard shouts from a few other Shinobi, asking about the hurry, but he had no time to stop and explain. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the tower began to creep closer.

There was a shock of pain, red hot in his ankle, as it twisted and rolled. Naruto stumbled, cried out, and fell hard, momentum carrying him ever forward. He skipped across the rooftop like a rock across water until solid ground vanished out from under him, and then tumbled through open air, arms flailing.

He hit the wall of the next building with the crunch of bone and couldn't even find the strength to scream. For a moment he hung there, as if he had been moving so fast that his body had become embedded in the stone, but then gravity reasserted itself and he fell to the ground below, tangling himself up in a clothesline as he went. His head cracked against the cobblestone street, and suddenly everything in his field of vision had a blurry identical twin to keep it company.

"Gods!" Shouted a woman in a roughspun green dress. She darted around the corner as Naruto tried desperately to untangle himself from a damp mass of women's clothing.

"It's fine," Naruto muttered, struggling to his feet. His ankle shrieked in protest, but the foot moved when he told it to, and that would have to do. "Official Shinobi business." The words were more for himself than anyone listening, and the reminder of where he had to be put enough fire in his gut to get him back to the rooftops and on his way.

He wasn't so fast with a twisted ankle, but he was closer to the tower now, and it wasn't long before he reached it. It jutted imperiously into the sky, all white stone and painted wood. He clambered up the wall to the sixth floor, then tapped anxiously on the window.

"Koji Naruto," said the evaluator who let him in. Naruto winced at the Koji - less a name than a warning, given by the village to the orphans who could claim no name of their own. Those who bore it had nothing, were nothing, and the knowledge of that fact was a fresh pain each time he heard the word. But it was his name, and he was in no position to be making requests of the evaluators he had already kept waiting.

He watched them as he dropped down from the windowsill. The one who had let him in was of average height, with tanned skin and a long scar running beneath his eyes. The headband on his forehead marked him a Shinobi of Fire - the two stylized flames on the shoulders of his flak jacket as a Chunin, a middling rank Shinobi. The other was taller, with lanky silver hair and a similar Chunin insignia.

"Take a seat, Koji-kun," the first examiner said, taking his own seat in the middle of the table. "My name is Umino Iruka. This is Nohara Mizuki," he continued, gesturing to himself and the other examiner, respectively. "We will have to move through this process quickly, as your lateness has delayed us. Am I being heard, Shinobi?"

"You are being heard, sir." Naruto took a seat across from the examiners, folding his hands in his lap nervously. "I'm so sorry about that, I was…um…" he trailed off, trying to think of a convincing lie. Another thing he should've prepared in advance for.

"It doesn't matter," Iruka said, shuffling a few papers around. "Lateness is not becoming of a Chunin. Who are you?"

"I am the empty vessel," was Naruto's instantaneous reply. "I am the clay soldier in which the will of fire burns." Iruka and Mizuki nodded, though it did nothing to ease to ease the knot in Naruto's stomach.

"You're sixteen?" Mizuki asked.

"Yes sir," Naruto said. It was close enough. His true birthday had been lost in the chaos following the Fox's attack, and he had been assigned a new one, for convenience. Like his name, it was something he didn't celebrate.

"You were born here?"

"In Konohagakure proper," Naruto said, unable to keep the pride from his voice. There was nothing he hated more than when someone introduced themselves as from Konohagakure even though they were really from some farming hamlet a day's travel away. Naruto knew very little of his early life, but he knew that he had been born within these walls. He knew the twists and turns of ancient streets, he knew the way the roof tiles shimmered in the light of the rising sun, he knew the relief brought by the shade of the great mountain on a hot summer's day, as if the old Hokage themselves were taking pity on their people.

"You've served as a Genin for three years now," Mizuki said. "In the sixth division."

"That's right."

"But you've never been assigned outside the village."

Finally, a question he was prepared for. "I've been out of the village. We fought a bandit group."

"Ah, I see that now." Mizuki took a moment to read over the report, eyes flicking back and forth. "A minor assignment. They weren't even Shinobi trained."

"Well, no, but-"

"Your marks aren't much better," Iruka cut in, before Naruto could defend himself. "Physically, you're just above the minimum for Genin rank. Academically…you're well below that."

"That's not true!" Naruto protested. Physically he was nothing impressive – scrawny and slow with no grasp of taijutsu technique, even if he could take a punch. And nobody was going to mistake him for an academic prodigy. But-

"Ah, right," Iruka said, tapping a pen against the table. "They lowered the academic threshold."

"And I'm above that threshold," Naruto said, crossing his arms. By three points. But he wouldn't mention that.

A wry smile stretched across Mizuki's face. "By three points," he said.

Shit.

"No aptitude for ninjutsu either," Iruka mused. "You have a wind affinity, I see, but no listed techniques?"

"Well, the multi part wind cannon should probably be on there…" Naruto said, scratching the back of his head. "It works…most of the time."

"So I guess my only question," Iruka said, "is with these marks and this service record, why are you here, wasting our time?"

The floor dropped out from under Naruto, and he slumped back in his seat. He had known that rejection was a possibility – likely even, though he had never spoken such a thought out loud. But even in his most hellish nightmares, it had never been so…blunt. "I'm – I'm sixteen."

"Yes, we established that," Iruka said.

Naruto swallowed. "So I only have one more year." The Shinobi corps had neither patience nor money for stragglers. If you couldn't impress the evaluators by the time you were well and truly an adult, you were written off – and while there was no rule against applying for promotion after seventeen, a late application being accepted wasn't so much unusual as unheard of. A Shinobi who truly possessed the will of fire, it was said, would shine brightly even in youth. Most civilian kids who never made the cut could be content with in the knowledge that they had been Shinobi – that they could serve their land and village again, if necessity required. They could return to their farms and homes and make a life there.

Naruto could not.

"So you evaluate your position and try again next year," Mizuki said.

"I won't make it!" Naruto said, looking between the two of them. He could see in their eyes, their faces, that their words were having no effect – but he couldn't stop. Not here, not now. "I'm not learning anything here! I know I could do it, I just need a teacher!"

Iruka's features softened, his once-hard gaze now tinged with pity. "You have a teacher," he said. "The sixth division-"

"I have a drill instructor," Naruto cut in. "An overworked Chunin who hasn't seen combat in years, and thirty other Genin on his plate. It isn't the same!"

"You received instruction to the rank of Genin," Iruka said, calmly, with the rhythm of something he had said a thousand times before. "But the handouts ended there. Make Chunin, and you prove yourself worthy of further instruction. Of a teacher. But that's something you must do yourself."

"The clan kids don't do it themselves!" Naruto said, the frustration and fear and rage all boiling up inside him. "They have siblings, and cousins, and parents, and-" his voice cracked, despite his best efforts "-family."

"Be that as it may," Mizuki said, "we can't give you a teacher until you make Chunin."

Naruto put his head in his hands. "Then I won't."

"Koji-kun," Iruka said. "There is no shame in life as a Genin."

Naruto couldn't stop a bitter laugh from bubbling up and out of him. That was easy for Iruka – _Umino_ Iruka – to say. There probably wasn't a single lifer in the whole Umino clan. It was decades of cleaning and kitchen work, of the most boring and irrelevant guard postings, of clerical work and lugging supplies back and forth. They wouldn't even let lifers teach basic, the seven years of training that turned children into Genin. The greatest honor a lifer could hope to achieve was to die as canon fodder, distracting an enemy from the real attack happening elsewhere. It wasn't life as a Shinobi. It was life as a laughingstock.

And it was, it seemed, his destiny.

-OOO-

The late afternoon found Naruto sitting on a railing that overlooked one of Konohagakure's many plazas. The red and orange light of sunset soaked the village, casting everything in a warm luminescence. Twenty feet below men and women went about their day, waving to each other, making small talk as they moved from work to home.

Naruto held a bottle of sake in one hand, already half empty. He wasn't a particularly frequent drinker, but it wasn't every day your dreams were crushed, utterly and brutally, and the pleasant buzzing in his head helped distract from the pit in his stomach.

What life was there for him, without the promise of being Shinobi? Naruto tried to imagine it, and despair filed him. The dead end of the lifer. The endless, monotonous grind of the factory. Every day until he died. Living knowing that he had failed – that he was not Shinobi, that he could never be Shinobi. Watching others live his dream, his life, because they had been lucky enough to be born Senju, Sarutobi, Umino.

He took another swig of sake, but the taste of rice wine on his tongue provided only momentary relief.

"Koji Naruto?" Asked a voice from behind him.

Naruto turned to see a girl. She was short, even shorter than him, green eyes shining from behind bright pink bangs. The rest of her hair was wound into an elaborate braid that fell over one shoulder, which she tugged at while he looked at her. A Shinobi headband hung around her neck like a necklace, and her flak jacket bore a single flame on the shoulders – a Genin, like him.

"Who's asking?" He said after a minute. The sake made him slow, and he couldn't put a name to the face. He felt as though he would've remembered this girl, had he met her before. She wasn't beautiful, but there was something about her…her eyes. Wide and innocent but also sharp, missing nothing. A man could fall into those eyes, he decided, and then he actually did fall, leaning too far off the railing and losing his balance, tumbling to the ground for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

Luckily, he managed to turn the fall into a roll, and popped unsteadily to his feet. He hadn't even spilled any sake.

Well, not much sake.

The girl ran fingers through her bangs, declining to comment on the roll. Likely for the best. "Haruno Sakura," she said instead. "Is me. And also, who's asking. Um, I'm asking." She cleared her throat. "You are Koji Naruto?"

Naruto's eyebrows began slowly ascending his forehead. "…Yeah."

"Good," she said. "Good. I've been looking for you…well, I thought we should talk…you see, I-" She stopped herself, took a breath. "Can I buy you dinner?"

And with that, Naruto was in love.

They went to Ramen Ichiraku, a street bar tucked away in one of the village's seedier districts. It was never a particularly busy restaurant, but they found themselves there during an especially noticeable lull, and as such the long wooden bar waited empty for them.

Ayame was there to greet them, a picture perfect smile on her face. Her father, Teuchi, wrapped Naruto in a headlock and asked him how his work had been going. It was the easiest thing in the world to smile and lie, to spin a grand yarn about carrying a squadmate with a broken leg fifty miles. "Believe it," he finished, leaning back in his seat, smile stretching wide. He could tell they didn't, not really. They knew him too well. But it was better than the truth. He had had enough pity for one day.

Sakura spent the length of the story examining the menu with a quiet intensity. She had her order ready by the time he finished – Ayame didn't even bother taking his, since Teuchi had already started on his usual.

"You seem at home here," Sakura said when Ayame ducked into the kitchen.

"Best food in the village," Naruto said. "In the whole damn world, probably."

"A ramen fan then." Sakura arched an eyebrow. "Bit of a coincidence, considering your name."

"What, you don't believe in fate?" Naruto asked, laughing. Again, it was easier to avoid the truth – that eating ramen made him feel close to a mother he had never met, a woman who had loved the food so much that she had named her son after a topping.

"I suppose I do," Sakura said, her tone almost melancholy. "But sometimes I hope I'm wrong about that."

Naruto shifted slightly in his seat, remembering earlier thoughts of a lifer, a factory worker. "You and me both." There was a pause then, stretching on long enough to be awkward. "So, not that I want to look a gift ramen in the broth, but…what are we doing here?"

Sakura drummed her fingers against the table for a moment before speaking. "Did you ever read Orochimaru's _Principles of Shinobi Breeding_?"

Naruto had never read a book in his life, but that wasn't the part of the question that drew his attention. "Orochimaru?" He asked. Almost subconsciously he stuck his pinky, ring, and middle fingers out and shook his hand twice – the Shinobi hand signal for _enemy_. "I haven't read anything like that…I don't want to get into any trouble." He fixed Sakura with a suspicious look. "Are you ROOT?"

_Beware, beware, what dwells in dark, beneath the shady branches.  
_ _Beware, beware, the deepest roots, with greedy eyes and hand-ses._

Sakura spit out the water she had been in the middle of drinking. "What?"

"Well, you come up to me randomly in the street," Naruto said, gesturing towards her shoulder. "And ask me to dinner, which pretty girls don't usually do, by the way - and now you're asking me about Orochimaru – and I don't know anything about Orochimaru, okay? What would he even want with me? I'm nobody." He made the enemy gesture again, more vigorously this time.

"Koji-san, relax," Sakura said, holding out a hand, as if afraid he was about to bolt. "I'm not ROOT. Okay? I'm just a Genin. Just like you."

"That's exactly what ROOT would say," Naruto said, although he had to admit that he didn't think it likely. This girl, with her bright green eyes and stammering awkward speech, didn't strike him as a member of Konohagakure's infamous secret police.

"Look, okay, I understand that I'm not – great at this," Sakura said. "But if you just…if you could just give me a second, I'll explain. I promise."

For a second, Naruto honestly considered leaving anyway. The day had been remarkably shitty, he was more than a little drunk, and he wouldn't have minded collapsing in his bunk and sleeping for a week. But then Ayame emerged from the kitchen with their food, and the familiar smell of his usual set his eyes watering with tears that were part joy and part exhaustion, and he just mumbled an okay before diving headlong into his free ramen.

Sakura took a deep breath, collecting herself. Ayame, sensing that they might benefit from some space, vanished back into the kitchen.

"I'm a Genin," Sakura said finally, "in the tenth division."

Naruto grunted through his food. The tenth division was known for a large contingent of scientists and medics – the eggheads, which meant he had stayed far away.

"I'm sixteen, like you," Sakura continued, "and for the past two years I've been working on a paper – genetic markers that indicate receptiveness to chakra based healing techniques, so…well, I won't bore you with the details, but basically I was kind of banking on it to make my case for Chunin." She grimaced. "And last month, someone published a paper that blew all my theories completely out of the water."

That, at least, was something Naruto could understand. "I'm sorry," he said, looking up from his ramen. "Could you write another one?"

"In a year?" Sakura asked, taking a hesitant bite of her ramen. "I don't – holy shit, this is really good."

"Right?" Naruto asked, a grin stretching across his face for the first time in what felt like years. He watched Sakura scarf down a few more bites before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Anyway," she said, "I think I probably could write another paper. The bigger problem is that my superiors were following my work. They know I was wrong about the last one. I need…" she paused, looking for the right words. "I need practical application. I need results."

"I'm still not really getting why you're talking to me though," Naruto said.

"This is what I was talking about earlier. Orochimaru – and we're allowed to read his books, and talk about him by the way – Orochimaru is a psycho and a traitor, okay. But he's also a brilliant scientist. And he had this theory where…well, you know, the Shinobi clans have been running breeding programs for a long time. Thousands of years, if you trust the histories, which you probably shouldn't. But still, a long time. And that's why, now, the average clan kid is way stronger and tougher and better at ninjutsu than the average civilian, even before training. They've been bred for it."

"Sure, I get it." As if he needed another explanation why clan kids were better than him.

"But all that means is that they're committed to one path!" Sakura said. She was growing more animated now, her speech getting more confident as she got closer to her comfort zone. "And why do we think that that path is the best? Like the ideal Hyuga doesn't match the ideal Uchiha in a lot of ways, so why do we assume that the ways they do match are necessary for the ideal Shinobi? I just…" she took a long, deep breath. "Look, did you know that you have the densest chakra of any Shinobi in the corps?"

Naruto frowned. He had been having enough trouble following her before she started throwing in non sequiturs. "What?"

"Actually, you have the densest chakra of any Shinobi since the village started recording stuff like that," Sakura said, as if she were only half paying attention. "They made a note of it on your file. I really had to pity the kids they made look through all the docs to confirm it, but-"

"Wait, wait, wait," Naruto said, cutting in before Sakura could really get going. "You read my file? Isn't that…classified?"

Sakura flushed pink and avoided his eyes. "That's, well…you know, beside the point."

Naruto didn't really think it was, but perhaps that was a conversation for another time. "Fine then," he said instead. "You're saying my chakra is _dense_? Is that a good thing?"

Sakura's eyes shone. "But that's the point!" She said, slamming her palm down on the bar. "Ask anyone, they'll say no! They'll say dense chakra is harder to mold. That it makes someone more likely to put too much power into a technique. That it just makes ninjutsu harder, all around. And so for generations, Shinobi clans have been breeding dense chakra out of their gene pools."

"Oh," Naruto said, sinking deeper into his chair. He could practically hear the hope leaving him, like air from a balloon with a hole.

"Fine," Sakura continued, still barely listening to him. "Dense chakra makes ninjutsu harder, fine. I'm not saying it doesn't. What I'm saying is…what if it also makes other things easier?"

Naruto thought about that for a second – really thought it about it, in a way he hadn't thought about anything in a long time. "I would be really good at that thing," he said. "Better than any of the clan kids."

Sakura's smile was as fierce as it was wide, a gash of white across her face. "We just have to find that thing," she said. "All we have to do is find it."

They started the next day.

-OOO-

As Genin, Naruto was an adult in the eyes of the village, and thus was no longer entitled to a bed or food from the orphanage which had been his home for his first thirteen years. His meager military pay wasn't enough for an apartment of his own, and so he had taken to living in the Genin barracks, a flimsy wooden structure packed with cots that served three square meals of somewhat edible paste per day. It was hardly a palace, but at least it had four walls and kept the rain out. It also helped that the barracks were usually full with civilian Genin who came from outside the village – Naruto had grown used to the noise and heat of dozens of bodies at the orphanage, and he wasn't sure he could fall asleep without them.

His days began in the dark, long before the sun had even thought to rise. The Genin were roused from their brief hours of sleep by the screams of whichever Chunin had drawn the short straw that day, and made to present. They rattled off trivia and endured heated verbal abuse until the Chunin grew bored, at which point they hustled to the barracks kitchen to grab their first meal of paste. Then, they began running.

If they were lucky, they stopped running around noon and took a break to eat more paste. If they weren't (and they seemed to be unlucky far more than they were lucky) they ran straight to a cramped classroom where a Chunin drilled tactics, logistics, and military history into their heads until they were deemed rested enough to begin sparring. From there, it was several hours of giving and receiving mild bruises, until they finished for the day by assembling, and then immediately disassembling, a camp until the Chunin observing them was satisfied.

After they were dismissed for the day, the intelligent Genin usually went to sleep, whereas the sociable Genin went out drinking. Naruto, being neither particularly intelligent nor particularly sociable, joined Sakura on the training fields. Vast, flat expanses of green grass rippled in the wind, occasionally broken up by sturdy stone posts that served as targets and punching bags. Not far off, the woods that gave Konohagakure its name stood, silent and imposing.

Thus did the training that would fundamentally change the course of Koji Naruto's life begin. In his opinion, there was really an excessive amount of talking involved.

Sakura was, of course, recovering from her own of day of studies, exercise, and hazing. The two shared a bottle of rice wine as Sakura ran down a list of questions she had prepared, prying into every aspect of Naruto's life – from his marks, to his military career, to his personal history. He would've been flattered, if she hadn't been so damn clinical about it. But after a few hours of relentless back and forth, she ran both hands through her hair and sighed heavily.

"I don't see it," she said finally.

The sun had well and truly set now, but the moon cast enough ethereal silver light to see comfortably by. Naruto lay stretched out of the ground, enjoying the feeling of grass against his skin, and of sake in his belly. "See what?"

"See where we're supposed to start," she said. "You have the densest chakra in recorded history. If that's useful in any way, it must be manifesting itself somehow. But I don't see it."

"Yeah, well, I'm bad at everything," Naruto said. The stars twinkled in the infinite blackness of the night sky. He could see the Sage's staff, and the dancing dragons, and even the monkey's paw if he squinted. "I'm the universally hopeless Shinobi."

"Don't say that," Sakura said. "I'll find it. I'm just tired…and drunk." She groaned. "We can't do the sake again."

"No!" Naruto shouted. "I need the sake. It's the only thing that's keeping me going."

Sakura rolled her eyes.

"It's true though," Naruto said after a moment. The sake was making him wistful, as sake tended to do. "I'm a mess. Maybe I deserve to be a lifer." He sighed. "It's funny. My career started out so well."

"Really," Sakura said, though Naruto got the feeling she wasn't paying too much attention.

"Really," he said, barreling on ahead anyway. "It was the first couple weeks of basic and we were learning our first ninjutsu."

"Ah, the clone technique," Sakura murmured. "I remember that. Good for fundamentals. The first technique is always tricky though."

"Oh yeah, it took me forever," Naruto said. "I had a really hard time forming everything, you know?"

Sakura laughed. "Oh Sage, tell me about it," she said. "I could never get the fingers right."

"I kept forgetting to make mine blink," Naruto said. "They'd just stand there, staring. After our sensei pointed it out, I figured it would be easier for me to just stop blinking…that was a really rough two weeks."

Sakura snorted, a noise that caught Naruto by such surprise that he couldn't stop from laughing. A moment later they were rolling around in the grass, tears in their eyes, the training grounds filled with helpless laughter.

The laughter faded, and the steady chirping of cicadas returned. Naruto sighed and wiped the tears from his eyes, still smiling. "Seriously though," he said after giving Sakura a moment to collect herself. "Once I got all the details down, my clones weren't bad. I never had issue with transparency." He shrugged. "I figured, maybe this Shinobi thing won't be so hard. Can you believe that?"

Sakura was silent for such a long time that Naruto began to worry she had fallen asleep. Just as he was about to roll over to check, she spoke. "The clone technique, huh?" She asked. "How about that?"

As it turned out, there was a whole lot more to the clone technique than Naruto had ever expected.

Chakra theory recognized seven basic types of chakra. The fundamentals – the center of the whole business – were yin and yang. Form and substance, respectively. Surrounding them were the five elements. Fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water.

The basic clone was yin – all form, no substance. A ghost, essentially, that looked exactly like you. It couldn't punch things, or crush the grass it stood on, or even cast a shadow, but it didn't need to. In a fight, the ability to create illusory copies was a potent weapon. But it was a simple technique, and served mostly as a template for the more advanced forms.

They started with wind, as that was Naruto's affinity. Each person's chakra tended more towards one element or the other, and thus, that person was able to work more easily with that element than others. Naruto didn't understand the details – every time Sakura tried to explain, his eyes glazed over – but he understood that much.

And yet despite his natural affinity, the wind clone took him nearly three months to learn.

Part of it was that Naruto and Sakura were busy. Their jobs as Genin left them precious little time for independent training, and by the time they reached the training grounds each evening they were typically exhausted. Part of it was that wind was a finicky element, and despite Naruto's affinity for it, he had a difficult time bending it to his will. It would gust and dash and slip between his fingers, never content to sit still or be molded. Part of it was that Naruto simply lacked talent. It was an awful truth, but it was a truth, and as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, he began to despair. He could Sakura was waning too, from the way she took longer and longer to show up each night. She had staked everything on him, and the weight of two careers was heavy on his shoulders.

Then, one day, he had it. He pressed his hands together, fingers forming complex patterns that molded the chakra within his body. A wavering form took shape in front of him – that of a boy, small even for his age, with a scrawniness he carried belligerently on his shoulders. Blonde, unwashed hair was cut rough and uneven, and his blue eyes darted back and forth, never quite coming to rest.

"You did it," Sakura said, as if she didn't quite believe what she was seeing.

Naruto did it again, and again, just to prove he could. Wind clones barely had more substance than the basic ones did, but they could carry very light objects, and were fast, and poofed into swirling winds on impact. You could do something with that, if you were clever.

"Believe it," Naruto said, and his smile was a blade. "What's next?"

-OOO-

To Naruto's surprise, the lightning clone took only two months. Lightning was more complicated, and far more painful to work with, than wind – but after countless hours trying to get the elemental chakra to listen to him, Naruto had picked up a few tricks. Like how he could craft the form of the clone out of his subconscious self-image rather than having to actively construct it in his mind's eye. Or how he could let the lightning flow along the same pathways that his chakra used in his real body, starting in its stomach and then spiraling outwards through its torso and limbs.

Lightning clones weren't much more durable than their wind cousins, and while they could bear more weight, they had trouble actually picking things up with their hands. They were noticeably slower as well – but when they popped, they didn't merely poof. They burst into a potent electrical shock that could incapacitate an enemy who happened to be close and unprepared.

In the next five months, Naruto learned to form water, earth, and fire clones as well. Truth be told, he didn't get them quite down pat – he was distinctly and uncomfortably aware of the looming deadline on the horizon – but he could perform them consistently, if he had a moment to breathe. Earth clones were slow but solid, and could even take two or three hits before dispersing. Water clones were a good mixture between durability and speed, though their faces always looked a little melty once they got moving. Fire clones were by far the most entertaining, as they exploded on impact, or when Naruto got particularly annoyed.

And yet, as the tenth month of training came to a close, Naruto and Sakura found themselves no closer to the breakthrough that they had set out to discover.

"Honestly, at this point you can probably pull it off," Sakura said. They were sitting in the grass of the training field, which was still wet with the day's earlier rain. Their backs were against one of the heavy stone posts, and they passed a bottle of sake back and forth, as had become their custom – but only when there was something to celebrate, or mourn. "The clone techniques by themselves aren't that impressive, but all of them together? The evaluators are partial to gimmicks. You polish up your rougher points, really lean hard into the one man army concept…"

"But where does that leave you?" Naruto asked. "We only started this because you thought there was something special in me. Have we found that yet? Do we have any idea if it's even there?"

Sakura sighed. "I don't know, Naruto." She sounded so utterly tired. "I thought it was clones because…well, there was nothing else. And you learned the techniques faster than anyone would've expected. But honestly I don't think that's because you have some genetic quirk. I think it's more because you're a better Shinobi than anyone gives you credit for."

That only made it worse. "Sakura…"

"It's okay," Sakura said, leaning her head back against the stone. Naruto couldn't see her from this angle, but he had gotten used to reading her moods these last ten months, and he could tell that she was…resigned. "Really, it is. You can do this, Naruto." She looked over at him, and she smiled despite her eyes brimming with tears. "You're going to be an amazing Shinobi," she said.

"Oh, fuck off," Naruto said.

Sakura blinked at him, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"I'm not leaving you behind," Naruto said. He jumped to his feet, then hopped into the air, turned a flip, and landed back on the grass. He spun to face her, the grass wet and cold through his clothes. "Where the hell would I be right now without you? We do this together, or neither of us does it."

"You're not thinking straight," Sakura said. She had wiped the tears away with a sleeve, and now she just looked annoyed with him. "I don't have anything. My theory was a bust, _again_."

"It wasn't!" Naruto said, not realizing until too late that he was shouting. "You went with your gut! And you're the smartest person I know, so your gut is the smartest gut I know! You weren't wrong!" He slammed a hand into the ground, hard enough to elicit a flash of pain along his wrist. "We just haven't pushed this far enough."

Sakura said nothing, simply stared at him with those bright green eyes.

"It's gotta be right in front of our faces," Naruto insisted. "I've been doing nothing but clones for the last ten months. I've got all the different types down. Six fucking different clone types, Sakura, it can't all have been for…" he trailed off suddenly, realizing that was missing something. It was the strangest sensation – like he'd been staring straight at a giant sign all along, and yet he never saw it until just now.

"Naruto?" Sakura asked, frowning.

"I only know six types of clones," he said.

"There only are six types of clones," Sakura replied. "I mean, you can make a clone with just about anything, so I guess there are the second level of elemental natures, but you can't use those without a bloodline limit, so…" she shrugged. "You know all the clones there are for you to know."

"Fire, water, air, earth, lightning, yin," Naruto said, counting them off on his fingers.

"Yeah."

"What about yang?"

"There is no yang clone, Naruto."

Naruto nodded, suddenly eager. "Yeah, but why?"

Sakura sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Because it's useless," she said after a moment of thought. "Yang chakra alone doesn't give the clone enough substance to matter. That's what the wind, or water, or whatever is for."

"Yeah," Naruto said, "but why?"

"Because…" Sakura stared at him. "Because that's just the way it is. Not even a Jonin could pull off a Yang clone."

Naruto scooted a little closer to her, not breaking eye contact.

"Don't say it," she said.

"Yeah," he whispered, just barely loud enough for her to hear. "But _why?_ "

They started the next day.


	2. Uchiha Sasuke

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc I  
** **Face the Future  
** **Chapter II  
** **Uchiha Sasuke**

"Meekness is rot of the Shinobi soul. I will cut it out of you, if I must."  
-Hyuga Hinata  
4th Hokage

The Chunin came at Sasuke with a roar, and for a moment the sounds of battle drowned out Kuri's reading of Tobirama's _The Three Part Snake_.

The Chunin – Uchiha Kaito, a wiry wisp of a man a few years older than Sasuke – leapt and spun, his leg cutting through the air like a sword. Sasuke ducked under it, then handsprung backwards so he could hear his assistant again.

"The rattle is not merely a warning," Kuri was reading, "but also a distraction. The thought of fangs is overwhelmed by the deathly sound, and-"

Hatake Izumo, a man of nearly thirty and a veteran of three wars, came in from the side. Oversized fists threatened to take Sasuke's head off his shoulders, so he twisted to the side to dodge the first punch, then deflected the second upwards with the lightest push to Izumo's elbow. Once inside the man's guard, it was the easiest thing in the world to place a swift barrage of punches on his chest and stomach. Izumo grunted and fell, body slamming heavily against the wood of the training floor.

Kaito came again, trying to take advantage of Sasuke while he was distracted – but he himself was also a distraction. Mitarashi Rin was pressing in from his blindspot, and Sasuke was forced to throw himself into an awkward roll to gain distance. Emboldened by his retreat, Kaito and Rin pressed their advantage, and Sasuke was only barely able to bat aside their punches and kicks. The two moved in unison, flowing in and out of battle as if it were a dance they had practiced beforehand, forcing him to spin from one side to the next to keep up with them. Their offensive was so relentless that Sasuke nearly forgot to follow along with his assistant's reading.

But it was only a matter of time. Kaito got too eager, came down too hard on his lead foot. When Sasuke swept it out from under him with an arcing kick, he tumbled hard to the floor. Rin, desperate to cover for her ally, charged in, and Sasuke ducked under the punch, grabbed her elbow, and threw her across the room. She slammed into the dojo's wooden walls hard enough to shake the entire structure.

Itachi had taught him that move.

The bile rose in Sasuke's throat at the thought. Kaito had regained his feet and was springing back, buying himself time. Sasuke pursued, a burst of speed putting him directly in front of his clan cousin, and beat his way through Kaito's guard with a storm of punches. Kaito fell and Sasuke was on him, fists screaming, blood singing.

He could still remember entering the dojo as a child, with Itachi waiting for him. Learning how to watch an opponent for the inevitable mistake, to capitalize on it swiftly and fiercely. He remembered Itachi's smile, the blood red eyes that marked him a wielder of the Sharingan, their family's birthright. It had been such an honor to learn from him. Itachi, who would be lord of the Uchiha clan. Itachi, who would usher their family into a new golden age. Itachi, his brother.

"Uchiha-sama!" Came a voice from very far away. "Uchiha-sama!" And then- "Sasuke!"

Sasuke snapped back to reality. His chest rose and fell, heavy. Sweat slicked his skin. The dojo was silent except for the steady drip drip drip of blood against wood.

He looked down. Kaito lay beneath him, limp. Sasuke had seized the front of his tunic, and his grip was the only thing stopping the Chunin from falling to the floor. His face was a mess of blood and bruises, his nose broken, his lip split in three places. The knuckles of Sasuke's free hand ran red with blood.

"Sage," Sasuke whispered, quietly, hesitantly. "Cousin." He lifted Kaito to his feet, still mostly supporting him. "I- I'm sorry."

Kaito sagged but managed to keep his feet, standing under his own power. "Nothing to apologize for," he said after a moment, though his words were slow and thick. "It's a spar."

Yes. A spar, not a flogging. Sasuke swallowed, but it did nothing to ease the taste of bile. "You should go and get healing," he said, unable to look Kaito in the eye. "Take a few days off."

"What, for this?" Kaito's face twisted into something likely intended to be a smile. "I just need to catch my breath."

"Take the day off, at least," Sasuke said. "Am I being heard, Shinobi?"

Kaito sobered, then touched his right fist to his left palm and bowed. "You are being heard, sir." He nodded to the rest of the room and then left through the sliding doors.

That left Izumo, Rin and Kuri. The silence was deafening. "Leave," Sasuke said, and when nobody moved the fire rose up and he shouted. "Leave!"

Rin and Izumo were gone before the word was entirely out of his mouth. Kuri, a mousy girl of the Tatami clan, looked respectfully at the floor. _The Three Part Snake_ lay forgotten in her lap. She had been his assistant long enough now to know when it was best to stay silent.

Sasuke took a moment to compose himself. His heart stopped slamming against his ribs, his breathing settled. The adrenaline of battle faded, and for the first time Sasuke noticed the early morning air seeping through the wooden slats of the dojo. It was chilly – he wore only pants, loose fatigues of black silk.

Finally, he looked up at Kuri. "Kaito has a wife and two daughters," he said, his voice tight. "Buy them something."

"Yes, Uchiha-sama."

Neither of them said anything as he dressed, donning the rest of his fatigues and the dark blue flak jacket. Three flames gleamed on either shoulder, a sight he was still not entirely comfortable with. For his age, Sasuke was one of the best Shinobi in Fire – and yet, he wasn't entirely sure he was suited for the rank of Jonin. In a year, likely less...but it would not do for the future Lord Uchiha to remain a Chunin, not at sixteen. He did not have the privilege of knowing he truly deserved the gifts he was given, but he thanked his ancestors all the same. Uchiha Sasuke would not be ungrateful for the gallons of Uchiha blood that bought him what he had now.

He gathered glossy, blue-black hair up and tied it off in a high ponytail, rolling his shoulders. His body ached from exertion – the best kind of pain, the kind that kept him strong and sharp and alive. He opened a sliding door and stepped out into the Konohagakure morning, bare feet against stone still damp from the night's rain.

It was late fall, nearly winter, and the Land of Fire was, for once, blissfully cool. The Uchiha compound, a vast expanse of land in the heart of Konohagakure, stood peacefully in the light of dawn. Stone pathways cut through gently rolling fields, and cherry blossom trees sent pink petals dancing through the wind. Sasuke took a moment to drink the beauty of it.

By the time he sat down to enjoy a breakfast of rice and fish, Kuri had spoken to the other household servants and was waiting for him. "Shisui-san returned from his mission not an hour ago," she said when he gestured for her to begin. "He seems to be unharmed, and is debriefing as we speak."

"Good," Sasuke said, unable to suppress a small smile. "Ask him if he would enjoy dinner tonight." It had been months since his cousin Shisui had been assigned his mission, a diplomatic excursion to Amegakure. It would be good to see him again.

"The Sarutobi wish to know your terms for a betrothal between Sarutobi Konohamaru and Asuna-san."

"The sixth's grandson?" Sasuke asked, receiving a nod of confirmation in reply. "I thought he was spoken for."

"His betrothal to Hyuga Hanabi fell through. We're not entirely sure why."

Sasuke grunted. Asuna was so far removed from the main Uchiha line that she was unlikely to ever awaken a Sharingan - but not so far that it was impossible, and that made her betrothal tricky. "Give them good terms," he decided, "but keep reversion rights for a few years."

Kuri made a few quick scratches on her notes. "The Sarutobi won't like that."

"I'm sure they won't," Sasuke said, turning back to his meal. "But I won't seal an Uchiha who still has a shot to awaken. Not even for Sarutobi Konohamaru. If they want a sure thing, offer Yoshino."

They went back and forth like that for half an hour – Jonin had been killed and needed to be replaced, Chunin were requesting time off to have children, rice shipments from the farmlands were slow and they might not make their quota for this harvest – the day to day mundanities of rule. In these matters Sasuke spoke with the full force and authority of his father, who of course was far too busy with important military and political governance. Finally, Kuri reached the last item on her list. "The Hyuga have requested another delay regarding the building rights by the south wall," she said. "They've sent a representative to beg your pardon."

"Sage," Sasuke swore, "again? They can't hide her from me forever." Hyuga Hinata was a meek, timid girl, more suited life as a kitchen maid than heir of the third most powerful clan in Konohagakure. But she _was_ the Hyuga heir, and that came with responsibilities. Eventually, she would have to sit across from him in negotiation, and no amount of coaching could protect her from that. "Send him in."

The Hyuga representative wasn't actually a Hyuga. He was a Chunin of the Shimura, one of the petty Shinobi clans who had been sworn to Hyuga since the days before the Founding. Other Shinobi clans preferred not to invite Hyuga into their compounds if at all possible, for their bloodline, the Byakugan, gave them eyes with the ability to see through solid walls – a fact as unnerving at home as it was dangerous on the battlefield. "Uchiha-sama," the Shimura said, bowing low. He held a polished wooden box in one hand, and presented it to Sasuke respectfully. "I bear a gift from Hinata-sama, whom it pains deeply to be unavoidably detained."

"Let her take as much time as she needs," Sasuke said flatly. "I will be here, waiting." He took the box from the Shimura's hands and slid it open, examining what lay within.

It was a small statue, carved of delicate stone. Gold and silver embroidered its armor, wrought in the style of the warring clans era, and its eyes were tiny rubies – an Uchiha, as if there was any doubt. In his right hand he gripped a gunbai, a large war fan, and in his right he held a lantern. "It is Uchiha Setsuna," the Shimura explained, his voice cloyingly pleasant. "Of the warring clans era."

"Obviously," said Sasuke, placing the statue on the table in front of him. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, he had to admit, but he didn't understand it. Shinobi didn't give gifts without some kind of message attached. What did the Hyuga mean to tell him?

The Shimura seemed undaunted by his curt response. "Setsuna was a fascinating figure, was he not?" He asked. "His own brother sought to usurp his position as Lord of the Uchiha. One of the few times in history your clan fought amongst itself…so evenly matched were the two sides, that Setsuna was forced to turn to their enemies in the region, the Shirogane clan. Only then was Setsuna able to triumph, and reclaim his birthright."

"I know my history, Shimura…-san," Sasuke said, lingering just long enough between the name and the honorific to be disrespectful. "Make your point."

"I often think of the Shirogane who chose to aid Setsuna," the Shimura said, his placid smile never wavering. "Surely they saw the opportunity that the fighting presented to them…the chance to destroy a rival."

Sasuke grunted. "The Uchiha weren't their only rivals in the region," he said. "The Subaku ruled land to the north. Only the Uchiha could check their advance." Even now, the Subaku clan ruled all the Land of Wind from their seat in Sunagakure. In the warring clans era they had been a terror, a great power to rival Uchiha, Senju, Kaguya.

"Quite right," the Shimura agreed. "They understood that peace in the region was more important than petty inter-clan squabbles. But…perhaps more importantly…they understood the ancient rights of succession. The clan belongs to the firstborn, no? Setsuna's brother was usurper. So, when forced to choose between Uchiha and Uchiha, the Shirogane chose the rightful heir."

Sasuke remained quiet, waiting for more, but it quickly became clear that the Shimura had said what he had come to say, Sasuke cleared his throat. "I see. Thank Hinata-sama for the gift…profusely. And remind her that I can't speak to the Aburame until I speak to her. We're running out of days."

"I understand, Uchiha-sama," the Shimura said, standing only to bow again, even more deeply than before. "It is my sincerest wish that we need not meet again."

"That makes two of us," Sasuke muttered as the man exited the way he came. When he was sure that the man had gone, Sasuke collapsed back onto the floor, staring up the wooden beams that crisscrossed the ceiling.

"Shall I have the statue put in your room, Uchiha-sama?" Kuri asked.

"Why not," Sasuke said. He still didn't understand what the damn thing meant. At first he had been convinced that it was intended as some kind of slight – a reminder of his status as the secondborn. But he had not usurped his brother. Itachi himself had abandoned all claims to the title of Lord Uchiha. And besides, he didn't think of Hinata as someone with enough guts to insult him like that, even through a proxy. "I hate the Hyuga," he said, to nobody in particular. "You would think a clan full of people who can see through walls would be a little more straightforward."

The clan belongs to the firstborn. But that wasn't necessarily so. Of Konohagakure's noble Shinobi clans, The Uchiha, the Hyuga, the Senju all clung to the tradition of primogeniture, but the Nara and the Aburame exercised different methods for determining their lords. Even amongst the petty clans, the exception was at least as prevalent as the rule. The Inuzuka, the Hatake, the Sarutobi…none passed Lordship to the firstborn by right.

Sasuke sighed and rolled backwards, pushing himself into a handstand before landing lithely on his feet. There would be time later to unravel Hyuga riddles. As always, he had work to do. He led Kuri out of his personal dining room and into the public areas of the compound's main building. Elegantly carved wooden columns supported a high vaulted roof, and the sun poured in through long windows, drenching the building in soft light. Armored Shinobi moved purposefully through the halls, while civilian servants cleaned and bustled and gossiped. All who saw him bowed respectfully, and Sasuke kept his face a mask of dignified composure. "How goes the scouting of this year's civilian Chunin?" He asked Kuri.

"Not well," Kuri admitted, struggling to keep up with his long strides. "We're combing through all the Genin likely to be promoted but…well, it's not a process built to favor the clans."

"I know that," Sasuke growled. It had been the answer he'd been expecting, but it still stung. It was a system that had begun under the third Hokage, back when civilians hadn't even had the right to advance beyond Genin. The Hokage provided for the training of civilian Genin, the third had argued, and so it stood to reason that the Hokage ought to have the right to promote those Genin if it so chose. In exchange for the approval of the noble clans, the third had thrown them a few measly opportunities to draft civilian Chunin for themselves. After the Hokage had picked the class clean of the best and brightest, of course. And under the third, that had been fine. It gave the Hokage more Shinobi under his personal control, but civilian talent was so few and far between that the noble clans thought nothing of it.

Then, one hundred years later, the sixth had tripled the budget for the civilian Shinobi program – and with modern advances in chakra theory and training techniques, the civilians in the corps became a force to be reckoned with practically overnight. The clans, ever slow to adapt, had managed to claw away only a handful of additional picks for themselves. It had been a paradigm shift in inter-village politics, but it all could've been tolerated had the sixth's radical agenda ended with him. Instead the seventh took office, and established new petty Shinobi clans answering directly to the office of Hokage, all without giving the noble clans a single new pick in the Chunin draft. It had been an outrage. It had been unprecedented gall. And yet he had done it, and now the noble clans were forced to grit their teeth and watch as the power of the Hokage – built on the backbone of a heavily preferential Chunin draft – swelled.

Now, all the noble clans could do was attempt to steal away a few Genin that might've slipped under the Hokage's nose, which was a taller order each year. Not for the first time Sasuke cursed the office, and lust for power it inspired in the men who held it. "Are we really so petty?" He asked. "That whenever we're given power we strive to hoard it, and forget the name given to us by our family?"

"I wish I knew, Uchiha-sama," Kuri said quietly. There was caution in her voice, and maybe a sliver of pity.

Sasuke shook his head, suddenly remembering that she was there. "Keep looking," he said, eager to put the slip behind them. "Every Chunin we pry away from the Hokage is a victory for Konohagakure. Double the number of scouts."

"Is that…" Kuri withered at his glare, and nodded. "At once, Uchiha-sama."

He increased his pace. The bows that came were no less numerous – but they were shorter, jerkier. Servants moved into adjoining rooms and hallways as he passed. Shinobi watched the ground when they walked by.

Calm. He was calm. He tried to make it show on his face.

Suddenly, the air of the compound was stifling. He stopped and stared down at his knuckles, still raw from the beating he had given Kaito. I will be lord of the Uchiha clan, he wanted to say to the servants who could not be near him. I am in control, he wanted to scream at the Shinobi who would not meet his eyes.

It was Uchiha Haru who interrupted his introspection. One of Sasuke's distant uncles, Haru was a powdered and perfumed man a few years past fifty. Birth had given him a twisted leg, and now he walked with a cane and served the clan as a bureaucrat. "Sasuke-sama," he said, bowing as deeply as his leg would allow. "I trust your morning has been well." He reeked of flowers.

"Uncle," Sasuke replied. "You're not usually out of bed before noon."

Haru laughed, a nervous titter. "Well, when you get to be my age you find yourself needing more and more sleep. But today it seems the Sage has seen fit to give me work. The Jonin Library has called an immediate meeting of the board. As I speak for our clan's two seats, it's imperative I attend."

The Jonin Library. Sasuke had nearly forgotten that the Uchiha still held a say in its administration. He had hardly read a report on the institution since he began undertaking duties as heir – it was not a particularly exciting post. "Did they say what the meeting concerned?"

"No, but it is quite unusual for them to call us in this way," Haru said, fanning himself. "It is quite a distance, so if I am to go-"

"Go back to bed, Uncle," Sasuke said.

"But, Sasuke-sama-"

"I'll attend the meeting in your place," Sasuke said. "I must familiarize myself with all the clan's duties, and I've already delayed this task too long."

"Be that as it may…" Haru said, "I'm sure you have more pressing matters to attend to…"

He was sweating, despite the cool air. Worried that he might lose a cushy posting, with no emergencies and less responsibility. He shouldn't have been concerned, not really. As an Uchiha, he had to be doing something, and there were few tasks inconsequential enough to risk assigning Haru to. Still, Sasuke couldn't say he hated watching the man squirm. Uchiha were warriors, Shinobi. They were the clay soldiers in which the will of fire burned. This…was not Uchiha. "Rest, Uncle," he said, clapping Haru on the shoulder. "I'll have Kuri brief you when the meeting is over."

"Yes. Of course." He couldn't hide the venom in his tone, but it didn't matter. Uchiha Haru didn't matter.

"Handle things here while I'm away," Sasuke said to Kuri, who nodded. Then, without another word, he stepped out a sliding door and was on his way.

Two Chunin trailed him at a distance as he dashed across the rooftops, careful never to get too close but also to never let him out of their sight. They were good, he had to admit. Better than some of the idiots who ended up following him around. Still, he took the opportunity to put them through their paces, pouring on the speed and taking a looping, circuitous route through the village. The wide, clean streets of the Uchiha district gave way to the cramped, graffitied alleys of the rest of the village. Sasuke dropped down to street level a few blocks over from the Jonin library and took a moment to admire a mural of Senju Tsunade – one of the sixth's legendary _Sanin_ students – painted in bold swathes of color. It was an excellent likeness, and though there was little love lost between the Uchiha and Senju clans, Sasuke had to admit it was a fitting memorial for one of Konohagakure's most revered heroes. The artist's signature, a line and semicircle forming a sai, was one that Sasuke had been seeing more and more around the village. Perhaps he could commission something, a gift for when his father returned.

Making his way through the press of foot traffic, he finally arrived at the Jonin Library itself. A short, squat building separated from the rest of the village by a high fence, it was built for function over style, in the simple, utilitarian fashion that characterized most of the rebuilding that had occurred after the Nine Tails attack. A Hyuga posted at the door watched him as he approached, white eyes taking in every twitch. Sasuke suffered no additional pat down or challenge as he walked into the library – that, at least, was a benefit of the Byakugan's invasive nature.

The first level of the library was the least restricted section, books and scrolls that could be accessed by any Jonin in the village. They lined long wooden shelves, everything a Jonin might need to better perform as a Shinobi. History and tactics, maps of varying levels of reliability, sealing and chakra theory, elaborate drawings of taijutsu katas, manuals for basic poisons. Sasuke plucked a random book from the shelf as he walked and read for a moment on theoretical applications of nature chakra before putting the book back down on a shelf near the stairs.

The more flights of stairs he ascended the more restricted the selection got. Chunin guards watched him as he passed, bowing respectfully when they realized who he was. He nodded back, not really seeing them.

He was the last to reach the meeting room on the library's top floor. The other representatives had already gathered around a circular table, with some watching an adjoining room through a thick pane of one-way glass. A Kato girl with dark hair was holding the Senju's seat. A minor Hyuga cousin Sasuke didn't recognize represented the Hyuga, also with one seat. The Aburame's three seats were under the care of…well, truth be told, Sasuke couldn't exactly tell. The Aburame were an odd, deeply religious lot, and all the clan who came of age hid every inch of skin behind heavy clothes and bandages. Sasuke's best guess was that their representative was a girl, older than him. The Nara held four seats, though their representative, a spiky haired boy his own age who Sasuke recognized as Nara Shikamaru, seemed to be napping with his feet on the table. Finally, the Hokage's seat was represented by one of the library's head administrators, a balding Namikaze man. Sasuke held back a scoff. The Namikaze had been made a clan in the wake of the seventh's legendary ascent through Konohagakure's ranks, but they had yet to produce a Shinobi anywhere near the man's equal.

Still, all the other representatives were Shinobi. Sasuke could see it in the way they held themselves, the deadly grace of each movement. Perhaps posting Haru here was a mistake after all.

"Now that we're all here, we might as well get this underway," the Namikaze said, clearing his throat. The others shifted to face him, except Shikamaru, who merely opened a single eye. "We've called you here today on short notice because several hours ago, the library was subject to a security breach," the Namikaze continued.

Sasuke looked to the rest of the representatives. None of them showed surprise on their face, but that meant nothing from Shinobi.

The Namikaze cleared his throat again. "Two Genin infiltrated the lower levels of the library at oh-four-hundred hours," he said. "They were apprehended before they could escape the premises." As if on cue, burly Chunin guards entered the adjoining room, which the representatives watched through the glass. Each carried a bound and blindfolded figure over one shoulder, which they deposited in chairs before taking up positions at the door.

"Hello?" Asked one of the intruders, a scrawny blond with rough cut hair. "Hello? Are you going to talk now?" A stream of dried blood ran down his chin, and his face was more bruise than unmarked flesh, but if he was in pain he didn't show it. "I'm the one who planned everything!" He shouted, head swinging this way and that, as if maybe the right angle would let him see through the blindfold. "I made Sakura come! She didn't have a choice!"

Sasuke watched the boy thrash. He had a lot of fight in him, for someone who had likely spent the last several hours being beaten and interrogated by his superiors. Most Genin would be thoroughly cowed, but the boy didn't strike him as a spy from some other village. He had the blonde hair really only common in Fire, and his accent was straight from Konohagakure's slums – all slurred vowels and dropped consonants, as if saying the entire word took far too long.

Sasuke supposed he could've been a particularly good spy – but would a particularly good spy really have gotten caught like this?

"I needed her to get through security!" The boy shouted, his voice growing wilder. "I had a kunai at her throat! I-" One of the guards stepped forward and hit him across the face, not gently. The girl – Sakura – looked up, and her lips began to move in some whisper Sasuke couldn't make out. The guard hit her too, and she fell silent despite the boy's protests.

Namikaze cleared his throat yet again. "They have been identified as Koji Naruto and Haruno Sakura, from the sixth and tenth divisions, respectively. Haruno is a civilian clan, and Koji is Koji, of course."

"Do you know why they did it?" The Aburame asked. Definitely a girl, although all the Aburame sounded strange, as if they buzzed faintly whenever they opened their mouths. "Are they spies?"

"We don't believe so," Namikaze said. "Both have records in the village extending back to childhood. Both are also seventeen…so with the Chunin draft in a few weeks, it seems likely that they panicked and tried to look for a shortcut." He coughed, and then pounded on his chest. "Typical punishment for this level of offense is a public beating and dishonorable discharge from the Shinobi corps, which will be carr-"

It was Shikamaru who interrupted him. "Did they try to take anything, specifically?" He asked, hands folded behind his head.

"…A book was confiscated from Haruno," Namikaze said, sounding distinctly displeased. And no wonder – two Genin had actually managed to get their hand on a text before being apprehended. Clearly, somebody had been slacking off. Namikaze would be on the receiving end of a harsh lecture, if he hadn't been already. Quite possibly a demotion.

"What was the book?" Shikamaru asked.

Namikaze sighed. "Is that really relevant?"

"Depends on the book, I guess. You took it from her, what was it?"

" _Yang Chakra Expression_ , by Akimichi Taichou," Namikaze said, looking more disgruntled with every word.

Sasuke saw it in Shikamaru's eyes – the question, the confusion. _Yang Chakra Expression_. A disgustingly dry text covering relatively basic chakra theory application, in any other context it would mean nothing. But here it turned the whole situation from a novelty into a mystery.

 _Yang Chakra Expression_. It wasn't unheard of for Genin to try and make their way into the Jonin Library, seeking a text that might earn them a coveted Chunin spot. But that text? Basic chakra theory? There were books here with knowledge that was actually helpful, techniques that would impress any Chunin evaluator. So who bothered to break into the place, only to steal a book like _Yang Chakra Expression_?

Shikamaru was sitting up straighter now, and Sasuke didn't need the Byakugan to see the gears of the boy's mind turning. For a single moment he considered letting this pass – returning home and dedicating himself to mystery he already had on his plate, the mystery of the Hyuga and their curious statute. But as he thought about it, he kept coming back to the idea that this time, he wanted to be the one ahead of the game. He wanted to be the one walking out of the room with others staring at his back, trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.

"Shinobi," Sasuke said, standing up just before Shikamaru could get a word out. "It seems I've been the cause of some unintended confusion."

All eyes in the room turned to him, and Namikaze tilted his head. "Uchiha-sama?"

"Koji-kun and Haruno-chan broke into the library on my instruction," Sasuke said, meeting the eyes of each representative in turn. Nara Shikamaru's seemed to scream with accusation, but the boy himself said nothing. "They acted as my agents in this, and I take full responsibility for the mess that has resulted."

"I…don't understand," Namikaze said. "Why would you do this? Why have two Genin break into the Jonin Library?"

"As a test, of course," Sasuke said, mouth curving into a tight smile. "As the Uchiha hold two seats on this board, I feel we have a right to know about the measures in place to protect the knowledge here."

It was a lie, obviously. Everyone present _knew_ it was a lie – and yet they couldn't do a thing about it. Not here, not now. Oh, there would be consequences to this stunt. Likely another clan would use it as an excuse to pry one the Uchiha's seats away from them. Most likely it would be the Nara, who seemed determined to build a majority on the board, though it seemed equally likely that another clan would step in to avoid that exact outcome. Either way, the Uchiha wouldn't escape from this unscathed. Haru would be pissing his pants now, Sasuke reckoned.

"This is incredibly unusual," said Namikaze, which was basically as close as he could come on calling Sasuke out on his bullshit. "I really should talk to a higher up."

"There's no need for that," Sasuke said. "This resolves the situation, doesn't it? I admit my methods were disruptive, but I do hold the privilege of entering the library, and the power to bestow that privilege to others." Suddenly, an early promotion to Jonin didn't seem all that bad.

Namikaze frowned. "I suppose that's true."

"Then there's been no crime," Sasuke said, spreading his hands. "Koji-kun and Haruno-chan were here on my instruction. They have never once set foot in an area they aren't permitted to be. If you would release them, I would like to see them to my healers." He turned to the rest of the representatives. "Unless someone would like to raise an objection?"

They didn't, although Namikaze was so quiet for so long that Sasuke feared he actually might. But finally he sighed and stepped out of the room, appearing through the one-way glass to exchange words with the two guards.

"Again, I'm so sorry," Sasuke said as the representatives filed out. "I'll be sure to send something to make the inconvenience up to all of you." Nara Shikamaru was the last to leave, and the boy gave him a lazy shrug, as if admitting that you couldn't win them all.

He met Naruto and Sakura outside, far from any of the Hokage's prying ears or eyes. They looked even worse than they had through the glass, but their eyes were still sharp, their movements quick. Neither bowed, as would have been customary. Instead they stood side by side, leaning on one another for support, and watched him.

"Hello," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. "Koji Naruto. Haruno Sakura." A civilian and a gutter rat. Had he reached beyond his wingspan here? Had he been too desperate for a victory after a day, a month, a year of nothing but defeat? Even if he had, it was too late now – he had no choice but to commit to the path he had chosen. He was a leader, and he knew what that meant.

"Yeah?" Naruto asked, scowling. "And who the hell are you?" Sakura whispered something in his ear, and his scowl deepened, blue eyes flickering to Sasuke's black ones, as if expecting to see the telltale crimson of the Sharingan.

"I'm the man who owns you," Sasuke said in answer. "I'm the only reason you aren't currently being dragged to the center of the village, to be beaten and stripped of your Genin titles." They flinched at that, for they knew the truth of it.

"What do you want?" Naruto asked.

"I want to know what the two of you were doing in that library," Sasuke said.

Naruto's reaction was automatic. "I made Sakura come. She didn't have a-"

Sasuke held up a hand, cutting him off. "None of that," he said. "I know bullshit when I smell it." He unzipped his flak jacket and reached inside, then in one smooth motion he pulled out the book and tossed it to them. It was Sakura who plucked it out of the air and turned to look at it, the confusion evident on her face.

" _Yang Chakra Expression_ ," she said, as if she didn't quite believe it.

"A lot of trouble to go through for a book like that," Sasuke said. "So, assuming you're not just a pair of idiots…and I'm really hoping you're not…what the hell have you got up your sleeves?"

They exchanged looks, as if sharing a silent conversation. Sasuke let them have the moment. There was no point in pushing now, not when they only had one option. Apparently they agreed, because after only a brief hesitation, they sat down and told him.

And for the first time since he had been told that it was he who would be Lord of the Uchiha Clan, Sasuke lapsed into a stunned silence.

It took him nearly a minute to recover. "Unbelievable," he murmured, looking up at the sky. Naruto and Sakura sat cross-legged in front of him, watching him intently, and when he looked back to them he smiled wide. "I might finally have him with this one."

"Him?" Naruto asked.

"The Hokage," Sasuke said. "The two of you are about to help me thoroughly embarrass my older brother."


	3. Chapter 3

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc I  
** **Face the Future  
** **Chapter III  
** **Haruno Sakura**

“It’s fitting, that we carve them on the mountain. From up there, we must all look so small.”  
-Inuzuka Mokuba

Haruno Sakura was wed on a cold autumn day in the heart of the Uchiha compound.

It was nothing like the wedding she had imagined for herself. The Haruno were a young clan, founded within the walls of Konohagakure. By the scale that measured the lives of families they were practically infants, and their founders had made a conscious decision to unchain themselves from past tradition. Their marriages were sparse, stark, and understated.

But now Sakura found herself in the middle of a marriage officiated according to the tenants of the Sage of Six Paths, he who gave life and light and flame. It was a Shinobi wedding, the result of a thousand years of ritual and custom – a complicated affair, which could often last all day and involved at least three costume changes.

It began at dawn, when what seemed like a horde of women, her maids for the day, dragged her from her bed to enjoy a long soak in the hot springs. Every inch of her skin was purified with oils, strong hands ground the knots from her muscles, her face was adorned with paints. Finally her hair was fashioned into an elaborate topknot, which twisted endlessly in on itself like some enormous snake, held in place by a silver comb. She missed the sway of her braid on her back and shoulders, but looking in the mirror she couldn’t deny that the style made her look a princess. Then three giggling servants squeezed her into a dress so colorful and ornate that she was forced to shed her illusions of nobility and resign herself to life as a peacock.

Breakfast was a long, languid affair, with several courses that all had to be served and eaten in a specific order to ensure health, wealth and purity. The maids chattered on endlessly about the latest gossip, and whether the clouds could really speak of good fortune or if that was merely a silly Nara superstition. Her parents fawned over her endlessly, telling her how proud they were that she had finally achieved her dream.

Tomorrow she would be Chunin, a goal she had strived for her whole life. But this was not her dream.

Her parents weren’t Shinobi. They heard Chunin, and they assumed everything had gone according plan. So Sakura smiled and laughed, and gave them no cause to worry. Strange, how easy it was to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Such was the heart of being Shinobi.

After breakfast her maids whisked her away again to prepare for the beginning of the ceremony proper. Luckily this was only a costume change, shedding the elaborate breakfast monstrosity for a simple, sleeveless black shift. The maids made sure her hair was still in order, touched up her makeup, and led her out to the yard. The crowd had already gathered – hundreds of Shinobi and civilian servants, all teeming with anticipation. Shinobi weddings were typically performed in much larger batches than this, on days chosen for religious or historical purposes, and it had been some months since the last ceremony. The people were eager for a chance, an excuse, to cut loose. The sheer number of them made Sakura’s head swim, and she knew that more would filter in as their schedules allowed. Shinobi was a round the clock profession, after all.

At the urging of her maids she began the long walk through the crowd, focusing on the feeling of grass between her toes. Shinobi women apparently married without shoes, though nobody could tell her exactly why. Smiling faces flashed before her as the crowd parted, making a path. She could easily pick her father’s shock of pink hair out from the crowd of blacks and browns and silvers. He had an arm around her mother, both of them looking unbelievably proud and just a little bit sad.

The last of the crowd parted and she joined Naruto at its head, exchanging uneasy smiles with him. The blond was dressed in white pants and a sleeveless white shirt, shivering a little in the chill. The servants had clearly done their best to tame his unruly hair, but after a few minutes left unattended it always sprang back to its natural scruffiness. “Are you nervous?” He whispered as she took her place beside him.

“Insanely,” she said, adjusting the way her shift clung to her hips. It was just a shade short of completely indecent, no matter how much she picked at it. “What about you?”

“It’s so bad I can’t feel my legs,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Please tell me I haven’t pissed myself.”

Sakura glanced to his spotless white pants. “I think you’re clear.”

A heavy sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the Sage.”

The edges of Sakura’s mouth twisted up at the sight of him. He was so terrified that it was actually kind of adorable. “Hey,” she said, nudging him with an elbow, “No getting left behind, remember? We do this together, or neither of us does it.”

“Right,” Naruto said, regaining his composure. “Together.” And for a moment, at least, the disquiet in her abated.

Then they turned back to the crowd, to see, for the first time, the faces of their betrothed.

Mitarashi Takahashi was a Chunin only a year or so older than she was. A tall, handsome boy, his wavy black hair and deep golden eyes gave him a roguish, confident look, though he seemed as uncomfortable in his whites as Naruto was in his. His arms were long and thick with muscle. As his eyes fell on Sakura he smiled, wide and genuine.

She couldn’t help but smile back. Marrying a Shinobi boy wasn’t all bad, she supposed.

Naruto’s bride to be, Hatake Rai, was a delicate girl of fifteen. Her silver hair was too short to form a proper topknot – had this all not been so sudden, she would’ve grown it out – so she had donned a black hood instead. Her mismatched eyes, one deep purple, the other light green, sparkled as she moved through the crowd, and when she spied Naruto she didn’t smile – but she did go red as a tomato, a flush rocketing up her neck and face until it hit her hairline. Sakura turned to see Naruto a similar shade of red and only barely held in a laugh.

The crowd zipped up behind the two as they walked, until finally they stood less than a step from her. Naruto and Sakura had been too nervous to realize that they were on the wrong side of each other, and so it took a moment to get everyone in the right position. But once they did they faced each other and tried not to fidget.

Uchiha Sasuke, as heir to the clan to which Mitarashi and Hatake swore fealty, took his place to officiate. He was bare-chested despite the chill, balancing himself smoothly on high sandals. He smiled at them as he began to speak, but his eyes remained cold. His eyes were always cold, even when he laughed. Sakura had a sudden, wild urge to see them soften and warm.

He spoke at length of the circumstances that had led them here, of heroes long dead. Of Mitarashi Mitsuki, who had suffered a thousand swords so that the Uchiha line may endure. Of Hatake Daiyu, who had opened his home and fields to the beleaguered Uchiha forces, and sheltered them from an unforgiving winter. He spoke of brotherhood, consecrated in ink and blood.

History so ancient it was likely fiction. And yet it ruled their every action as certainly as a blade at their throat.

After Sasuke had finished speaking each couple was brought six cups of sake, which they drank with interlocking arms to demonstrate compatibility. Then they walked circles around the empty cups to demonstrate devotion, and finally exchanged gifts, to demonstrate caring and generosity.

It was asinine. The gift Sakura gave – a pair of rings forged from dark iron – were selected by tradition and provided to her by Sasuke. They proved nothing, nor did the sapphire earrings that Takahashi presented to her. Still, they were exchanged, and the crowd murmured appreciatively.

Once that was done, however, they were finally allowed to leave and change into the ceremony’s final outfit. This time the maids were a little more subdued, though they couldn’t help but gush about how handsome Takahashi had looked in white, and how the blue of the earrings would really bring out her eyes.

When she emerged back into the yard she was dressed in a white kimono, accented only by a long sash of green silk that had been wrapped around her waist half a hundred times. Takashi’s sapphires glittered in her ears, and her nails had been painted a deep blue to match them.

Naruto accompanied her to the front of the crowd, in a black kimono over which he wore a black jacket and long striped skirt. He cradled an orange silk sash in his hands as though it were glass, and might shatter at the slightest fumble. It wasn’t long before Takahashi and Rai appeared, dressed identically to them – though Rai’s ears and fingers flashed orange, and the sash she wore was teal. Takahashi held a blue sash in his hands.

After another endless speech by Sasuke – of history, of course, and of the opportunities they held now, and of the expectations that came with them – the Uchiha heir signaled for Sakura and Rai to step forward. A knife glinted in his hand, coming from nowhere, and he sliced through the knots that held their sashes in place with smooth, gentle cuts. A handful of children who couldn’t have been more than five or six ran up, grabbing the ends of the sashes and dashing quick circles around them until the silk was totally unwound. They bowed deep, taking the cut sashes back with them into the crowd.

Sakura and Rai turned back to their respective grooms and lifted their arms, allowing Takahashi and Naruto to wind the sashes they held around their waists. When blue had replaced Sakura’s green, and orange Rai’s teal, Sasuke lifted his hands and declared them wed.

Of course after all that not even festivities could be brief. They danced long into the night, passing cups of sake and stronger liquors, imported from distant lands and villages. Sakura received what seemed like a thousand congratulations from a thousand faces she didn’t recognize. She tasted delicacies she had never dreamed of. Bitter chocolates from the rainforests of Water, honey from ancient hives in Stone, an iced cream they enjoyed high in the mountains of Lightning. She shared a dance with her father, and her mother, and Naruto, and Sasuke, and even Rai.

“She’s a much better dancer than I am,” she told Naruto, plucking a drink from the tray of a passing servant, still dexterous despite the buzz. “I feel like I have two left feet out there.”

“You’re doing amazing,” he said, smiling. He looked so at ease now, so different from the boy who had worried about pissing himself just hours ago. “You look amazing.”

“The clothing suits you too,” she said. “And Rai looks good in orange.”

“She does, doesn’t she?” Naruto asked, throwing a glance over at his wife. His wife. It seemed so strange, even to think it. She hadn’t even known him a year, and yet already it seemed impossible to think of him as a married man. But he was a man. An adult. They both were, or would be, tomorrow. Chunin. “I completely panicked when they asked me what color it should be,” Naruto was saying, still looking at Rai, his hand in his chin. “I never expected to need an answer to that question. I don’t even think they knew I was Koji until I blanked on it.” He laughed and shook his head.

Sakura laughed with him. “Have you picked a name yet?” She had taken Mitarashi, under the terms of her contract, but Naruto had the dense chakra, the strange genetic quirk that had set off the chain of events leading them to this moment. He and Rai would take a new name – his name – and pray that his quirk was passed on to their children. If all went according to plan, in a few generations there would be a new petty clan sworn to Uchiha.

“No,” he admitted. “I’ve tried a million, but none fit. I think Sasuke’s getting annoyed with me.” He shrugged. “I’ve spent my whole life hating this name, and now that I finally get to leave it behind I’m starting to miss it. Am I crazy?”

“You’re just human,” she said. “And maybe a little scared. Koji will always be a part of you…but it isn’t you, not anymore.” She poked him in the chest. “But my advice? You’ll know the name when you know it. Don't try to force it, no matter what Sasuke-sama says.”

Naruto opened his mouth as if to respond, but before he could Ayame had grabbed his hands and hauled him to his feet. “You didn’t think you were getting away without a dance?” She said, spinning herself under his arm.

Sakura smiled as the waitress tugged him away. Ayame and Teuchi had been Naruto’s only guests.

She flitted through the crowd, making small talk, accepting compliments, enjoying the night. A child of three or four hid behind her kimono’s train, and she kept a dutifully straight face when his friends came by looking for him. She rustled his hair and sent him on his way. A pair of girls were rolling in the grass, to the great amusement of a crowd of drunken partygoers. One leapt to her feet, holding the green sash that had once been Sakura’s aloft with a cry of triumph – only to have it snatched from her by another girl, younger, who vanished into the press of the crowd.

“I hope Miyuri-san ends up with one of them,” Takahashi said from behind her. “She deserves a little luck.” Sakura turned, her green eyes meeting his golden ones. He inclined his head to her, the barest bow, and offered his hand. She took it. He was a gifted dancer – slow and strong, and didn’t step on her toes despite the flush of liquor on his face.

“I know what this is,” he said as they swayed back and forth, the band playing _Mito’s Wail_ for what felt like the fifth time. “Sasuke wants you tied to the Uchiha. It...it doesn’t have to be more than that, if you don’t want.”

“I…well…I guess, um, I don’t know,” she whispered, running her fingertips along his jaw. She would never have been bold, had she not been drunk on sake and liquor. “Everything that – I mean, this has all happened so fast.”

“Tell me about it,” Takahashi said. “Two days ago I thought I’d be marrying Yamanka Ino. I had all my things packed to move to their compound.” He shook his head. “What I’m saying is…I know this is a lot…and I guess I’m really looking forward to getting to know you.”

Sakura smiled, and touched his jaw again, and they finished their dance. And as the celebration began to wind down – as her parents bid her goodnight, and she began the long walk to the Mitarashi compound that was now her home – she told herself that she was happy.

-OOO-

The next day found her gathering her personal effects from one of the tenth division’s shared labs, a large concrete room tucked away below half a hundred feet of dirt. A vast array of glass vials sat atop a dozen tables, some bubbling, some dripping, others sitting perfectly still. Notes and papers littered every available surface, not just the tables and floors but even the walls and ceilings, stuck there with kunai when no space had been available. Writing in a dozen different hands criss-crossed the chalkboard – formulae, personal notes and jokes, even the occasional funny drawing. It was a messy, chaotic place, even when entirely deserted, and it had been her home away from home for four years now. She had begun her Shinobi career as an assistant, not twenty feet from where she now stood, watching samples day and night to make sure they didn’t catch fire. Her captain for that assignment had been Gekko Ishimi, a heavyset woman with short blonde hair and no tolerance for fools. She had died three years ago, in a land very far from here. They had never managed to recover the body.

Sakura blinked. She would miss this place, she decided. She had just finished organizing her instruments when the door behind creaked open, and she turned to see Koji Kabuto standing in the doorway.

Kabuto was a Chunin, a twenty-three year old who had made waves in the tenth division thanks to his natural aptitude with the chakra scalpels technique – a method for utilizing chakra to make cuts finer than were possible with any blade. In a few years, he would be one of Konohagakure’s most accomplished surgeons. A bushy ponytail of hair, grey before its time, hung down to the nape of his neck. “I suppose it’s true,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “You’re leaving us, Haruno-san. My apologies. Mitarashi-san.”

Sakura couldn’t suppress a smile at the –san honorific. For so long she had been Haruno-chan to every Chunin in the village. Now, finally, she was an equal. “I wouldn’t call it leaving,” She said, making sure she had all her books properly stacked. “Just relocating. It’s not like I’m retiring from the corps.”

Kabuto took his glasses off to absently clean the lenses with a sleeve. “Ah, so you aren’t.” He said. “Though you’ll be working on Uchiha projects more often than not, I imagine.”

The reminder of what she had lost stung, but Sakura forced her smile not to waver. “I can think of worse fates than getting to study the Sharingan the rest of my life,” she said instead.

That got a laugh from him, and as he stepped inside the lab he closed the door behind him. The lock’s soft metallic click echoed in the empty room. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said. “Still, I hope you don’t mind if I request you from time to time for projects of my own.”

“I would be honored.” She had been getting attention like this more, since the wedding. Uchiha Sasuke had shocked the whole village by marrying off two of his most eligible young Shinobi to a Koji boy and a civilian girl, just weeks before the Chunin draft. Now the general consensus was that there must be something special about them, if the Uchiha heir was willing to go to such lengths to snatch them from under the Hokage’s nose. “I’ve been a fan of your work for a very long time.”

“And I yours, though perhaps not for so long,” Kabuto said. “I just recently finished reading your paper you know, though it remains tragically incomplete.”

Sakura made a face. “Really? I wish you hadn’t. It’s a little embarrassing, in retrospect.” Sakura’s paper hadn’t just been misguided – every theory had been brutally, distressingly wrong.

Kabuto’s smile was thin but genuine. “The only difference between a scientist and a layperson is the number of times they’ll be wrong,” he said. “I thought your theories showed initiative. A willingness to buck traditional thinking.”

Sakura laughed. “Where were you a year ago?”

“I’ll admit I was caught up in my own business. It’s a mistake I hope not to repeat.” He stepped forward, reaching into his white lab coat and withdrawing a small, hand bound journal. “I want you to have this,” he said, sliding it across the table.

Sakura frowned and picked the journal up. It had no identifying markings on the front cover, but on its spine the number 14 was marked in small, precise hand. “What is it?” She asked, opening the journal to the first page. Then she saw the drawing of the white snake eating its own tail, and her blood ran cold. “What…is this?”

“You know what it is,” Kabuto said.

Her hands shook. Her lips and teeth and tongue felt clumsy as she murmured, “Or-Orochimaru.”

“The infamous missing journal,” Kabuto said, his eyes hidden by the light reflecting off his glasses. “The only one of his writings that ROOT never found.”

Sakura swallowed and tried to settle her hands. She remembered telling Naruto, on the night they had first met, that reading Orochimaru’s works wasn’t a crime – but this journal had never been sanitized and approved by the Hokage’s office. This was true contraband, a death sentence bound in leather. “Why…why would you give this to me?” She asked, in barely more than a whisper.

Kabuto tilted his head slightly. “Weren’t you listening?” He asked. “You’re exactly the type of person who needs to read this. Someone who could full appreciate its insights. Its ambitions.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, her voice hard. “Please, just…take it back. I don’t want it.” But she didn’t hold the book out, to return it to him. Instead she clutched it tighter to her chest.

“There’s no need to lie, Mitarashi-san,” Kabuto said. He took a step closer, and Sakura’s eyes darted to his hands. He had no weapons on him she could see, but that was no guarantee of safety. Every Shinobi’s body was a deadly weapon, and Kabuto’s fingers were knives. But he saw her tense, and raised his hands slowly, palms up. “Easy,” he said. “Easy. I can see it in you. The curiosity. The want. It’s like staring in a mirror.” He touched his thumb to his chest, “My heart,” his forehead, “my mind, they scream for truth. You expect me to believe yours don’t?”

“Cut the fucking theatrics!” Sakura hissed. “This serious! This is beyond just illegal, it’s-”

“And why do you think that is?” Asked Kabuto. “It’s only knowledge, Mitarashi-san. Experiments and their results.”

“Experiments on children,” Sakura shot back. “Fire children.”

“Brutal, grisly things, to be sure,” Kabuto said, his face impassive. “I don’t defend Orochimaru’s character. But the man is a genius. And knowledge, in and of itself, is merely knowledge. It cannot be good, nor evil.”

“No,” Sakura said, flinching at the echo of her own words, “but it can be dangerous.”

This, of all things, drew a smile from him. “Ah,” he said, “and now we approach the heart of it. Dangerous, yes. But to who? To you? To me? To the civilians who struggle and fall short because they lack the knowledge to better themselves?” He shrugged. “Or to them? The Shinobi who rule this village?”

“I could turn you in,” Sakura said. “I could march into the Hokage’s office and have you arrested. Interrogated. Tortured.”

“You could.” He stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “If you do, they will drag me from my bed. I’ve had a very long shift, and I’m very tired.” He turned back to the door and unlocked it, then cast one last look over his shoulder. “If you have thoughts,” he said, “I would love to hear them.” And then he stepped out the door and into the hallways beyond, his footsteps growing quieter with each passing moment.

Sakura shoved the journal into the very bottom of her bag, and left the lab without another word.

-OOO-

Sakura hurried through the crowded streets of Konohagakure, her head down, one hand clamped possessively over her bag. Every shadow made her jump, every tiny brush with another pedestrian sent her heart rate skyrocketing. Still, the press of the crowd was better than being up on the rooftops, exposed for all the world to see.

“Mitarashi-chan.”

How could she ever have done this? How was she supposed to handle it? If anyone saw her with this- Sage, she was married now, even her room was no longer her own.

“Mitarashi-chan.”

She was a fool. She ought to march back to Kabuto and throw the damn book in his face. She ought to set the thing on fire and forget today had ever happened. Orochimaru was a monster, a traitor. His writings were poison and already they were doing their work.

“Sakura-chan!” She came to herself with a start and looked up, heart hammering against her chest. Uchiha Sasuke stood on the rooftop above her, hands in his pockets, the slightest frown touching his lips. Dark hair framed an almost inhumanly beautiful face.

She was staring. The civilians in the street around her were watching her warily, uncertain what to make of the scene. She looked around, fought down a blush, and leapt to join Sasuke on the rooftop. This at least seemed to convince the pedestrians that, whatever was going on, it was Shinobi business and no concern of theirs.

“Uchiha-sama.” She bowed low, forcing her fingers off her bag. He would notice, if she were protecting it like she might a treasure. “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Sasuke said, crossing his arms. “A new name is a lot to get used to.”

“Yes, of course.” A lucky break that he assumed her distractedness was the result of not being used to the new clan name. Now if only she could stop fidgeting. Her hands ran through her bangs, traced the hem of her flak jacket, brushed dust from her thighs. She forced them down by her side and smiled. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Sasuke’s dark onyx eyes drank in every motion, but if he thought her odd he said nothing of it. “I wanted to speak with you regarding our plans going forward,” he said. “Walk with me.” But he didn’t so much walk as take a flying leap over the street, landing on the rooftop across from them. Sakura followed him and they fell into a comfortable rhythm, a pace quick enough to keep the blood pumping but slow enough to maintain conversation. “I haven’t yet decided on a suitable mentor for Naruto and yourself,” Sasuke said as they ran. He spoke in a voice low enough that the two Chunin who followed them couldn’t overhear, which struck Sakura as strange. Did the man not even trust his subordinates, his own bodyguards? “My initial thought was Shisui, but…well, I’m not so sure he’s the right fit.”

“U…Uchiha Shisui?”

Sasuke looked at her like she was a particularly slow child.

Sakura flushed. “Shisui of the Body Flicker.”

“The very same,” Sasuke said. He didn’t bother to ask how she knew the name. Shisui was a legend in Konohagakure, a true cousin of the eighth – a son of Fugaku’s sister, not just a clan cousin. They said he was the fastest Shinobi since the seventh. They said he wielded the heavenly black flame. They said a lot of things, about Uchiha Shisui, and it likely wasn’t enough. And Sasuke had seriously considered having him train her and Naruto?

It was too much. Sakura had lived her entire life believing that her path to Chunin would come only through the Hokage’s office. Through proving herself to the evaluators, through being chosen in the Chunin draft. She had always known that marriage into a clan was a possibility – she had just never expected that possibility to become her reality. She had never expected everything she wanted to just be handed to her.

But Chunin was what she _wanted_. And even if she had never wanted it this way, she had had no choice. The moment Uchiha Sasuke had walked into her life – the moment he had rescued her from the consequences of her failure at the library – she had been his, to do with as he wished. He was, after all, Uchiha Sasuke. Heir to an ancient clan. The result of a thousand years of meticulous breeding.

He was of the Shinobi that ruled this village, and she was his now, and it filled her with despair. “It would be an honor to learn from a living legend,” she made herself say. Her hands were still now, no longer fidgeting, no longer clasping at her bag. Her heart beat slow, and steady. “But I’m sure Naruto-san and I will make it work, whoever you choose. We’re empty vessels. Clay soldiers in which the will of fire burns.”

The words sounded sincere to her own ears, but he only scowled. “I have nothing but clay soldiers.”

She glanced at him, surprised by the venom in his tone. Surprised by how human it made him seem.

It was several long moments before he spoke again. His voice was flat and empty, drained of the poisonous animation it had held. He seemed the heir again, carved from marble. “The two of you pose an interesting challenge,” He said. “Normally, at this stage in the training, we try to place teachers with students based on similarity of style. A ninjutsu master with a ninjutsu prodigy. An assassination expert with a covert ops specialist.” He shook his head. “But there’s nobody in my ranks who does quite what you two do.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“Think outside the box,” Sasuke said. “It’s why I first thought Shisui. He’s brilliant, but the more I think about it the more I realize that his genius is traditional.” He glanced over at her. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

It was a miracle that her hands didn’t give her away. “I might.”

“Then _help me_ ,” he whispered, and in that moment she understood why his guards could not hear this conversation. “I’m staking more on the two of you than I consider strictly wise.”

“I think…I mean, I wouldn’t…it's just that…” she snapped her mouth closed, shame racing through her. She wanted to ask him why he was doing this. She wanted to poke and prod, to find the words that would bring the real Uchiha Sasuke to the surface. But when she needed her words they abandoned her, as they always did. Sasuke watched her with cold unblinking eyes as she took a deep breath, arranging her thoughts in an order her words could keep up with. She focused on the easiest question he was asking her, shoving thoughts of duty and risk and leadership aside. “If you’re asking me which Jonin I would consider a good fit for Naruto-san and I,” she said, perhaps more slowly than was strictly necessary, “then there’s only one satisfactory answer.”

Sasuke inclined his head, waiting.

“Hatake Kakashi.”

Their feet hit the next rooftop and Sasuke skidded to a stop, sending a single blue tile skittering across its neighbors until it shattered against the ground below. Sakura slowed more carefully, glancing back at him. Far behind them, his bodyguards pulled up short as well. Sasuke stood there for a moment, watching her, as if waiting for more. Sakura, feeling her statement stood perfectly well on its own, watched him back.

And then he began to laugh.

His eyes were beautiful when he laughed, rich and soft and warm. “Oh, Sage,” he said, “you’re serious.”

“You asked my opinion.”

“As much as I wish I told Hatake-dono what to do, I don’t,” Sasuke said. “Nobody does, except my brother, and him only barely.”

Sakura nodded. The Hatake clan was sworn to Uchiha, but control of individual Shinobi was sometimes traded between clans – or between a clan and the Hokage – in exchange for money, marriages, or land. Rarely did it happen with a Shinobi as decorated as Kakashi, who had been a legend even when he’d been traded, but she knew nothing of what had happened behind the scenes of that particular arrangement.

What surprised her was Sasuke’s use of the – _dono_ honorific. The heir of the Uchiha clan couldn’t refer to a mere Jonin, no matter how decorated, as – _sama_ , but – _dono_ was typically reserved for Lords or Kage addressing those of equal status. For Sasuke to use it here indicated a depth of respect Sakura wouldn’t have believed he could possess for a man who was once sworn to his father.

“Well, I don’t know your Shinobi,” she said, “but I know Hatake Kakashi. If a poor reflection of him is all you have, so be it.”

Sasuke grunted, considering her words. “I suppose this is what I signed up for,” he said. “Well, if I’d wanted things easy…” he trailed off rather than finish the thought, staring pensively out across the village. “As you were, then,” he said suddenly, and then without another word he sprang away, leaping from rooftop to rooftop towards the great mountain – towards the command district, from which the Hokage ruled.

Sakura watched him until he and his bodyguards vanished into the maze of stacked buildings. When she was certain that they were well and truly gone she dropped back down to the street, startling the living daylights out of a woman watering the plants in her windowsill, and set off through Konohagakure at ground level. The eight faces of the Hokage, carved into the great mountain that towered over the village, seemed to watch her as she walked. Most accusing were the eyes of the eighth – Itachi, who had once been Uchiha. Itachi, who looked so much like his little brother. They had not carved the sharingan’s three tomoes into his eyes, but he watched her all the same, his glare asking if she was truly the type of woman who would turn her back on her home in favor of traitors and madmen.

She shook her head. Stone eyes could not watch her, and the true Itachi sat in the Hokage’s tower, far from here. Still, she did not glance up at the mountain again.

Eventually she reached the white walls and red gate that marked the entrance into the Uchiha district. The guards posted there knew her face, and they traded small talk as she passed – about the weather, and how she was settling in to her new home. The streets of the Uchiha district were wider and cleaner than the rest of the village, and notably safer as well – though as a Shinobi, Sakura had little to fear from civilian pick-pockets. Still, she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t enjoy being able to let her guard down. Lord Uchiha Fugaku was known as a harsh and uncompromising man, but his reputation had its advantages.

The Mitarashi were neither the largest not the richest of the petty clans sworn to Uchiha, but they were generous to their people. As a wedding gift they had given Sakura a lab, a blank concrete room several dozen feet underground that had once been used to store food. It was cramped and old and smelled of earth, but it was hers alone, and safe from prying eyes. She descended the stairs and fumbled in the dark for a moment before her hands found the grooves in the wall that marked the seals she knew were there.

She pushed her chakra at them, and light flared into existence, racing along long lines of carved patterns. Sealing – or _fuinjutsu_ , as it was more formally known – was one of the three Shinobi arts. The correct patterns, when painted or carved, could store and mold chakra along a preset model, performing jutsu as a Shinobi might – albeit in a highly limited capacity. Conversion of chakra to light was one of the simplest applications of such an art, and even the slight amount of chakra Sakura had committed would keep the lights on for some time.

She had plenty of time to read.

-OOO-

It was in her lab that Naruto found her, several days later. “I don’t really know what science is supposed to look like…” Naruto said, looking warily around the lab, “but this looks a little murder-y to me, Sakura.”

The last few days had seen Sakura making the space her own. Against the wall was a small table containing hers tools – scalpels and pliers, scissors and tweezers, a few syringes – all laid out in a neat row. A padded table large enough for a full-grown man to lay on stood in the middle of the room, and below it was a large sheet of thick paper which could be easily disposed of and replaced once it got dirty.

Sakura glanced over at him. “Did you lock the door?”

“Yes,” Naruto said. “But, uh, people know I’m here.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Sakura said, rolling her eyes. “Get over here.”

He didn’t seem particularly happy about it, but he came. She flipped through the pages of a heavy medical textbook – it hadn’t been updated in decades, but it would do for now. “Have you been practicing the yang clone?” Sakura asked.

“Yeah!” Naruto said, clearly excited to be able to talk about his training. “It’s still not quite there yet. Everything’s sort of…wavery, and muddy? But the book helped a lot. And Rai has some good advice.”

“Really,” Sakura murmured, flipping through the pages, double and triple checking her work. “Rai-chan is helping you?”

“Well, doesn’t Takahashi help you with your training?”

“Does it look like he’s here?” Sakura asked, not looking up. Rai might still be a Genin, but Takahashi was a Chunin, and had a Chunin’s duties. They hadn’t seen much of each other since the wedding – and though Sakura had yet to admit it out loud, she didn’t much care. “Sasuke-sama will be assigning us a Jonin teacher soon,” she said, finally finding the page she was looking for. “If you still don’t have the yang clone’s kinks worked out by then, he or she should be able to help you.”

“Sure,” Naruto said, shrugging. He didn’t sound particularly enthused. She knew he’d prefer to get this on his own, but they all had to make sacrifices in this new life they were living. “It’s not the yang clone though,” he said. “It’s got a better name.”

“Ah. Which is?”

“Well, I don’t know yet,” Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck. “All my name energy is going towards the clan name situation.”

Sakura looked up at him. “Still?” Sasuke must’ve been be furious. When she had counseled Naruto to ignore the heir’s haste, she hadn’t anticipated him taking quite this long. But it _was_ important to Naruto, and he really shouldn’t be rushed. She began checking her instruments for dirt – she had cleaned them to begin the setup, but one could never be too careful.   
  
“I’ll get it eventually,” Naruto said, rolling his eyes. “Both of them. They’re…oh! They’re _percolating_.”

Sakura dropped her pliers and stared at him. “Since when do you use words like percolating?”

“Rai has a word of the day calendar,” Naruto said. “It’s fun!”

“Maybe she really is good for you,” Sakura said, shaking her head. She finished checking her instruments and turned to him, hands on her hips. “Alright. Are you ready to get started?”

“I guess,” Naruto said. “I’m not really sure why you need my help though.”

Sakura hopped up onto the table and lay down flat, smoothing her hair. “Well,” she said, “I don’t really trust myself to pull my own teeth.”


	4. Hatake Kakashi

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc I  
** **Face the Future  
** **Chapter IV  
** **Hatake Kakashi**

"I'm a little lost," the boy admitted, "and everything looks so dark and so hopeless."  
-The Sword of Totsuka

Hatake Kakashi walked the remnants of a battlefield, leaving bloody footprints in his wake.

The trees towered above him, hundreds of feet tall, soaking the ground in shade. A body at Kakashi's feet twitched, reaching out to him. "Water," it rasped, the ground beneath it slick with blood. Kakashi bent down, tilting his head to see the body's headband. Three open-bottom triangles, a stylized field, were engraved on the metal plate. Kusagakure, the village hidden in the grass. Kakashi flipped a knife into his hand and stabbed it through the body's throat.

It died quiet.

Kakashi continued his walk. Corpses littered the field but these, at least, were long dead. The stench of blood was so unbearable that he had taken to breathing through his mouth – but even through his mask he could taste it on his tongue, metallic.

Finally he found it. A corpse, smaller than the others, in a Konohagakure flak jacket. The red and white Uchiha fan was emblazoned on its back. He lifted its head by the chin to stare into the unblinking eyes.

They were red.

Kakashi exhaled through his nose, long and slow, and drove his knife into each eye in turn.

"Better safe than sorry?" Asked a feminine voice. He looked down to see that the corpse of the Uchiha boy was thrown atop a gently breathing girl, as if cradling her. Brown hair hung lank, drenched in blood. Purple tattoos marked pale cheeks. "Where were you?" She asked.

"I am not my father," he said, and the loathing raced through him, red hot.

"Where were you?" She asked again. "Where were you? Where were you?" The corpses joined in, echoing her words in her voices he recognized, even though he had not been there to hear them speak and scream and die. Then, in a whisper he could hear even over the chorus of the dead, she spoke again. "We were wrong," she said, and no longer was her voice a child's but a woman's, steeped in regret. "Look at what we've done to their home."

She tried to say more but her breath whistled out from a deflated lung. Kakashi looked down to see a fist sized hole in her chest, and then she-

He awoke from his nightly terror to the sound of someone coming up the outside stairs.

For a moment he lay in his bed, motionless, sweat sticking the sheets to his skin. He slowed his breathing and heart rate, straining to focus on the noise outside.

There. Footsteps coming up the rickety wooden stairs that led to his third story apartment. Two of them, both Shinobi based on the way they avoided making a racket. No – three of them, but two were walking in lockstep.

Kakashi rolled off the bed, hitting the floor without a sound. His feet, long since familiar with the anatomy of his floorboards, avoided the areas where the wood would creak under his weight. He danced through the trash and assorted weaponry that littered his apartment, pulling on his fatigues and the familiar, skintight mask that covered his nose and everything below it. A few scraps of autumn sunlight streaming through the blinds of the window over his bed provided the apartment's only illumination, but Kakashi's eyes were used to the dark.

There was a knock on the door, three authoritative raps. "Hatake Kakashi!"

Kakashi froze, watching the door. He plucked a knife from a nearby bookshelf – better safe than sorry.

"Hakate Kakashi!" Came the voice again. "It's Uchiha Sasuke!"

Ah. Well, now he definitely wasn't opening the door. Kakashi crouched low, waiting to see what the Uchiha heir would do if he just stayed quiet.

Sasuke banged on his door again. "He might not be home," another voice suggested. One of the lockstep Shinobi.

"Dammit, you're probably right," Sasuke muttered. "If the Hokage doesn't already know we're here, he will soon. We need to find Hatake-dono now." A momentary pause. "We'll go inside. If he really isn't in, maybe there's a clue as to where he went."

Shit. Kakashi bounded across the room, still entirely silent, eyes locked on a spring loaded trap nestled in the far corner of the room. He stretched up to his full height, just over six feet of gangly muscle, and plucked three shuriken from the midst of the trap. Such a device was an excellent deterrent for would-be assassins, but there was no profit in killing the Uchiha heir – even if he was breaking and entering. It would be a mess of paperwork, not to mention his head would be served to Uchiha Fugaku on a silver platter. And Kakashi could think of so many more pleasant ways to die.

His eyes swept over the myriad locks he had installed on the door, and he silently undid the ones he had bothered turning last night. If Uchiha Sasuke wanted to come in, he would come in, and Kakashi would prefer to not have to replace a broken window. The creak of metal told him that the knob was being turned, and he sprang into action.

By the time the door opened completely, exposing his apartment to the autumn sun, he was on the ceiling. Chakra aided his fingers and toes in gripping the wooden planks, and though the mask made it difficult to grip his knife between his teeth, he'd had enough practice to manage. The trap he had emptied triggered, the slightest twang of metal wire the only sign of its existence. Kakashi sucked in a breath, hoping no-one would hear. It wouldn't do to have their eyes on the ceiling.

Fourtunately, Uchiha Sasuke was occupied with another matter as he stepped through the threshold into Kakashi's apartment. Unfortunately, that other matter was the second spring-loaded trap nailed to the side of the bookshelf, which hurled three Shuriken at the Uchiha heir the moment he opened the door.

Kakashi winced. He needed to stop setting that stuff up while he was drinking.

Sasuke's eyes flickered to the spinning shuriken, and his hand darted up. He wore standard Konohagakure combat gloves, fingerless black cloth with a metal plate sewn into the back, and he put the armor to excellent use by knocking aside the first two shuriken and catching the third on one finger.

He glared at the throwing star for a moment, then shook his head and motioned to someone behind him. "Hatake-dono?" He asked, stepping gingerly into the apartment. Two Chunin goons followed him, shadows.

Kakashi watched them, barely breathing. One of the reasons he loved this apartment so much was that the construction above had warped the already uneven ceiling, and now there were always patches of deep shadow above the heads of unsuspecting guests. Anyone looking directly at him would be able to make him out, but when Shinobi didn't consider themselves to be on the battlefield, they tended to forget to keep their eyes peeled in all directions.

"He really lives here?" Sasuke asked, frowning at the mess. "It would be a pit even if he kept it clean."

Well, Kakashi couldn't disagree with him there. Sasuke nudged an empty take out box aside with one toe and grunted. "Fresh. He was here last night, at least," he said. "Fan out, see if we can find anything."

Sasuke stayed in the main room, which included Kakashi's bed and a living space, while the goons took either side of the apartment – one going into the bathroom and the other to the kitchen. Kakashi scrambled along the ceiling, prioritizing staying in Sasuke's blindspot, and swung through the doorway and into the kitchen while the Uchiha's back was turned. The goon was picking through his dirty dishes, his face a mask of weary resignation.

When the goon had stepped far enough into the kitchen that he could no longer be seen from the main room, Kakashi made his move. He let go of the ceiling with his hands, increasing the chakra flow to his feet and knees so that they would keep him anchored despite the pull of gravity. His upper body hung perpendicular to the floor, just behind the goon - and when the goon took an idle step backwards, Kakashi's arms snapped out, snaking around the man's head and neck. The man tried to scream, but by then Kakashi had him firmly in his grip, and all that came out was a strangled huff. He tried to struggle, but Kakashi lifted him bodily off the ground, so that his toes were inches above the floor, and applied just the slightest pressure to his neck with a tensing of his biceps.

That got him to stop thrashing, at least. Kakashi placed his mouth less than an inch from the man's ear and spoke, so softly that the goon would barely be able to hear him despite their proximity. "Hey buddy, hey," Kakashi said. "Relax. I'm not gonna hurt you much."

He could hear Sasuke and the other goon still shuffling through the apartment. Neither sounded like they were coming closer to the kitchen. "Here's the deal," Kakashi continued. "You tell me what your boss wants – very, very quietly – and I don't pop your head like a melon, yeah? Nod if you agree."

The goon kind of quivered for a second, unable to move his head in the midst of Kakashi's death grip. "Ah, right," Kakashi said. "Sorry. Blink twice if you agree, then."

Two blinks. "Smart," Kakashi said. "Quiet now." He eased his stranglehold ever so slightly, just enough to give the goon some air –

And of course, the goon screamed. He really only managed a gurgled "Uchi-" but it was loud enough that there was no chance the Uchiha hadn't heard. Kakashi swore silently as he heard shoes twist against wood, and squeezed hard.

The goon's head didn't pop like a melon – but Kakashi's arms and fingers had been expertly placed so that enough pressure would cut off a few choice blood vessels to his brain. The goon went limp practically instantly, and Kakashi covered up the sound of himself dropping to the floor by letting the goon's body land noisily beside him. He dove for the far side of the oven and rolled gracefully through a square hole cut into the wall at ground level. The hole was covered with a sheet, painted so carefully that it seemed a part of the wall itself – but like his earlier hiding spot, it wouldn't hold up to sustained scrutiny.

The hole led back into the apartment's main room, putting Kakashi directly under a large chair. Elevated furniture was uncommon in the Land of Fire, but he had gone out of his way to purchase some for this exact purpose. Sasuke was already in the kitchen by now, but Kakashi saw the other goon's feet as he rushed to join his master. Quickly, carefully, Kakashi emerged from under the chair, picking his way across the room. Getting to the window over his bed would require him to cross right in front of the kitchen doorway, but if he could reach the door –

"He's in the apartment!" Sasuke shouted. "Watch the doors and windows!"

The little bugger had gotten smart since the last time Kakashi had seen him. Admittedly, he'd also grown three feet or so, but that didn't make Kakashi feel any better as he squeezed himself under the futon to avoid the gaze of the remaining goon.

"Hatake-dono," Sasuke said, deliberate footsteps carrying him across the room. "We only want to talk."

Yeah, that was how they got you. Kakashi was old and experienced enough to know that words were just another Shinobi tool, deadly as any knife or shuriken. Still, any chance of avoiding them had pretty much gone up in smoke when the first goon had turned out so damn loyal. If he had just gone for the exit straightaway…but he had gotten greedy. Now they knew he was here, and it wouldn't be long before they started looking under the furniture. But he'd be damned if he made it easy for them.

A shuriken lay just beyond the lip of the futon, and so Kakashi's hand snapped out to grab it before anyone could notice. He spun the star shaped throwing knife on one finger, then with a flick of his wrist sent it sailing across the room, just over the floor. It buried itself in the wood of the far wall with a satisfying thunk.

Kakashi watched the goon's feet as the sound reached him. He started making his way over towards the wall, to investigate the source of the noise, but as he passed the futon Kakashi reached out and grabbed his ankle. The goon flailed, shouting, and Kakashi yanked the ankle hard towards him. The goon fell like a sack of bricks, his head bouncing noisily off the floor.

"Tatami-kun!" Sasuke was back in the main room now, making a beeline for his unconscious subordinate. Kakashi wove his fingers together in a pattern he had learned so long ago that it was practically second nature.

The lack of space under the futon meant that when the clone materialized Kakashi was actually overlapping with its illusory form, but that was fine. The clone sprang forward, acting according to the intent that had been in Kakashi's mind when he created it, and Sasuke cried out in surprise as he watched Kakashi emerge from under the futon and barrel directly towards him.

To his credit, he was fast. He whipped his foot up in a kick that would've taken the clone's head off, had it been more than an illusion. The minute his foot passed through the thing's forehead and it dissolved, Sasuke was casting his eyes around the apartment, looking for the real Kakashi.

Of course, by this time the real Kakashi was already sitting in the kitchen, his feet up on the table, one hand in a box of cereal. "Sasuke-chan!" He said, smiling merrily under his mask. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Uchiha Sasuke looked to the unconscious bodies of his men, then to Kakashi. His dark eyes burned with fury. There was a rage in the boy, that much was for sure – so like his father. But then he sighed, and the rage drained from him, and Kakashi was reminded of the ever cold, placid features of the Hokage. "Was all this really necessary?" Sasuke asked, taking the seat across from him. "You could've simply opened the door when I knocked."

"And you could've left me alone," Kakashi said, setting the box of cereal aside. "So I think it's only fair you suffer a fraction of my inconvenience."

Sasuke drummed his fingers against the table. "You haven't changed at all, I see."

"But you have," Kakashi said. "Quite the little Lord now, aren't you? Breaking into people's homes. And did I hear that you're trying to keep this visit a secret from your big brother?"

"I would prefer to have a chance to speak with you without the Hokage's interference, yes," Sasuke said.

"Scandalous."

"And I…apologize for entering without permission," Sasuke said, ignoring Kakashi's sarcasm. "If I had any other choice I wouldn't have come into your home." He cast a look around. "If you can really it call it that."

Ah, the Uchiha. Never missing a chance to be snotty. Kakashi yawned, stretching his arms high above his head. "Well, the apology is nice to hear," he said, "and I do get a kick out of knocking Uchiha goons unconscious, so I guess we can call us even on this one." He smiled, making sure it was wide enough to tug at his mask. "You really should find more competent bodyguards."

"I don't think it mattered who I brought here," Sasuke said, his voice even. "You would've made them like fools."

Kakashi laughed. "Whatever you came here to ask me for, you must really want it."

He thought that would be the beginning of Sasuke's pitch, but the Uchiha heir surprised him. "Did you know the Hatake are preparing to name a new wielder of _Tsukiyojin_?" He asked instead.

By the time Kakashi's rational brain had processed what Sasuke had said, his mouth was already speaking. "Who?" He asked, and there was no question as to how desperate he was for an answer.

Sasuke smiled, ever so slightly, and Kakashi cursed inwardly. Reacting like that had been stupid, giving away the upper hand. Now Sasuke had something Kakashi wanted, and he knew it. Fine. Kakashi wasn't so arrogant that he couldn't bow and scrape a little to learn who would be inheriting his father's sword.

Well, technically it wasn't his father's, though Hatake Sakumo had been the greatest wielder of the sword in recorded history. The blade could emit blinding white light at the wielder's command – which legend claimed was a result of it being forged of moon-metal, but which common sense explained by seals worked into the steel – and his father had been known from Water to Earth as Konohagakure's White Fang because of it. Only the greatest of the Hatake were permitted to draw _Tsukiyojin_ – Kakashi had not even seen it ten years. If there was truly talk of naming another wielder…

Sasuke settled back into his chair. Amazing how smug satisfaction could radiate from an otherwise blank face, but he was Uchiha. "There are a few candidates being considered."

"A few?" Kakashi laughed. "They're desperate. There isn't a single Hatake worthy of holding that sword. Who're the lucky bastards? Shin? Rai?" Sasuke's eye twitched, and he knew he had the right of it. "Two for two, huh?" He leaned forward. "Shin's mediocre at his best and Rai…Rai has skill, sure, but no artistry. _Tsukiyojin_ isn't just a sword. It's a brush that paints in white and red."

"An interesting turn of phrase," Sasuke said. "Are you a poet, Hatake-dono?"

Kakashi waved his hand dismissively. "Ah, I surprise myself occasionally." It had been his father, who had first compared _Tsukiyojin_ to a brush. The man had had a passion for art of all kinds, though his greatest works had always been upon the battlefield.

Sasuke didn't seem quite convinced by his deflection, but declined to press the matter further. "If you really don't believe any of the Hatake are fit wielders, why not return?" He asked instead. "They would give _Tsukiyojin_ to you in a heartbeat. They're eager to remind the world that the White Fang has been reborn."

Kakashi's voice was flat. "I am not my father."

Sasuke smiled at that, and Kakashi had to resist the urge to grind his teeth. "No," the Uchiha said after a moment, "but you are Hatake. A successful Jonin. A legend, even, in the right circles. And at any point you could've returned to your clan and taken your place there. Taken up _Tsukiyojin_. Hell, I'd bet they would even name you Lord. You could lead them into a new era. Make them truly great for the first time in living memory." Sasuke shrugged. "But instead you've lived a decade in squalor. Hiding from your responsibilities to your clan. Your family."

Kakashi took a long moment, breathing deeply. It did nothing to help. "You sit there," he said, his words sharp and clipped, "and assume I'm like you, Uchiha Sasuke. That I owe something to my name. This is arrogance. I owe Hatake nothing."

Sasuke said nothing.

"You say that I'm a legend in certain circles," Kakashi told him. "I say there's no need for such modesty on my behalf. By seventeen, I had fought Momoichi Zabuza and still had all my limbs. I was the hero of the Fifteen Day War. I had killed the Kazekage's ninth wife." He smiled tight, though it didn't show through his mask. "By seventeen, I was already a legend."

Sasuke said nothing.

"When negotiations started, my clan dug in their heels," Kakashi said. "They thought that my request to be traded was a fit of childish pique. That if I were given time to cool down, I would come to my senses and call the whole thing off. Time disabused them of that notion, and eventually they had no choice but to begin compromising." He held up a single finger. "But there was one thing they never compromise on. One point on which they never, not once, gave an inch. I would keep my name."

Sasuke said nothing.

"See, one of my first offers," Kakashi said, "was that I would marry into one of the Hokage's clans, take their name. Nohara. My clan wouldn't hear it. I would be Hatake Kakashi, and that was the end of it. Because they understood that their reputation, such as it is, was built on the backs of better men."

Sasuke said nothing.

"And never once, in ten years, have I been tempted to return," Kakashi said. "To give that clan the tiniest fraction beyond what I have already given them. Not for _Tsukiyojin_. Definitely not for a Lordship." He shrugged. "So I hate to tell you that you've wasted your time, but…well, no I don't. You've wasted your time."

Sasuke looked at him, his eyes flat, and then he said, "I will reinstate Hatake Sakumo."

Kakashi said nothing.

"He will receive a full Shinobi funeral," Sasuke said, "and his name will be added to the monument honoring those lost in the 4th Great War."

Kakashi swallowed, the boy's words ringing in his ears. He remembered the way his father's corpse had swung, lazily from the rafters. "You're a real son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"That's an interesting way to say thank you," Sasuke said. "But you're welcome nonetheless."

"My father was sworn to Uchiha, through Hatake," Kakashi said. "To your father, and your grandfather before him. He spent his entire life in their service. If you believe that he's worthy of honor in death-"

"You're not this naïve," Sasuke interrupted. "What I believe is irrelevant. Lords can't be in the habit of giving things away for free, or they don't stay Lord very long."

Kakashi laughed. "What will it cost me, then?"

Triumph flashed in Sasuke's dark eyes. "I want you to return to Hatake," he said. "I will help you fulfill any duties still owed to the Hokage's office under the terms of your transfer. After your father's reinstatement, you will begin training two of my Chunin."

"Ah, your mysterious new subordinates," Kakashi said. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Their names are Mitarashi Sakura and…well, Koji Naruto, but only for the moment," Sasuke said. "I can at least assure you that you won't be bored."

Kakashi rubbed at his chin. "I have two conditions," he said, even though his mind had been made up the moment Sasuke offered reinstatement. He wouldn't be much of a Shinobi if he didn't push for every advantage he could get. "Fist, I want autonomy in choosing my missions."

"And how do I know you won't use that to subvert the entire point of this arrangement?" Sasuke asked. "I won't have you taking missions to the far end of Earth to avoid your duties."

"You're so paranoid," Kakashi said, rolling his eyes. "If I promise to be a good boy, will that satisfy?"

Sasuke considered that. "You can have as much autonomy as I can give you," he said finally. "Even I have to take orders from the Hokage, sometimes. Your second request?"

Kakashi smiled. "I want you to join Naruto and Sakura as my third apprentice."

For the first time since the conversation had begun, Kakashi got a satisfying reaction from the kid. Sasuke's eyes widened, and his response was slow in coming. "I'm…already Jonin."

"Are you?" Kakashi asked, inspecting his nails. "Awful slow, for a Jonin." Frustration flickered across Sasuke's face, and maybe a bit of shame alongside it.

"Why ask for that?" He asked. "You really want three students to look out for, instead of just two?"

"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound like a pain in the ass," Kakashi admitted. "But I'm sticking by it. I could tell you that I'm a sucker for tradition…or that I'm interested in training someone so often called a prodigy…or that I hope I can curry favor with your father…but the truth is that I mostly want an excuse to hit you in the face a whole bunch."

Sasuke gave a long, slow sigh. "I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"

"Oh, almost certainly."

-OOO-

The Uchiha compound held its own training field, slightly smaller than those shared by the village as a whole but tucked away from prying eyes.

The prying eyes of the public, at least. They eyes of those sworn to Uchiha were another matter entirely. Servants and gathered at the edge of the field, pretending to wash and stitch and sharpen. Shinobi gathered beside them, not bothering to pretend.

Kakashi was surprised how little he felt, looking out over the compound that had been home as a child and was now home once again. The Hatake compound, like the compounds of all petty clans sworn to Uchiha, lay within the larger Uchiha territory within the village, and he had walked these streets countless times, spent countless hours training in this very field. It all looked so familiar. Some Lords enjoyed the constant renovation of their land, made easy with a few Chunin skilled in earth techniques, and a weeklong mission would see you returning to a home you scarcely recognized. The Uchiha preferred continuity, tradition. They had added a river that twisted lazily by at the edge of the field, a convenient spot for drinking and resting and water techniques, but other than that everything looked just as it had the day he had left.

His students stood before him, all dressed for battle – in the fatigues and high collared flak jackets of Konohagakure. Mitarashi Sakura, her pink braid swinging in the wind, watched him with bright eyes green as grass. Koji Naruto stood with his arms crossed, his face locked in a scowl, looking Kakashi up and down as if he might find some weakness in the Jonin's stance. And Uchiha Sasuke stood placid, eyes deliberately avoiding the crowd.

It was Uchiha Sasuke they had come to see. They were curious about Naruto and Sakura – and about Kakashi himself, of course – but nothing drew men and women to a training session like the chance to watch their prince in action. If Sasuke felt any apprehension about the chance he might get his ass kicked in front of those he ruled, he didn't show it. Kakashi supposed that was good. It was a lesson all Lords had to learn eventually, that power could and must survive the occasional display of personal weakness. The Shinobi life was one of learning, and learning demanded failure.

"Alright, listen up," Kakashi said, quiet enough so only his three students could hear him. "My name is Hatake Kakashi, and I-"

"We know your name," Naruto interrupted, making no effort to keep his voice down. "When are you gonna teach us something, you lazy bastard?"

"Naruto!" Sakura hissed.

"What?" The blond shot back. "It's been a week since he got here, and we're just getting around to introductions! I went to a funeral for some geezer who died twenty years ago and haven't learned one new technique!"

Sakura looked to Sasuke, as if hoping he might step in to control the situation, but the Uchiha didn't move a single muscle. Good. He understood that Kakashi was in charge here – that this was his situation to control.

"That geezer was my father," Kakashi said to Naruto, "and he would've laid you out on the grass for speaking with such disrespect. The proper form of address for me, as your teacher, is Kakashi-sensei."

Naruto flushed and stared hard at the ground, muttering something about not having known. Kakashi gave him a minute to stew in his own guilt and then spread his hands, smiling wide enough that the expression could be noticed even through the mask. "But I'm not so strict. As long as we leave family out of it, I think we can call each other whatever we like."

Naruto squinted at him slightly, unsure if he was being let off the hook or not. "I'll stick with lazy bastard then," he said, slowly. "No, wait! I'll think of something better. Something with a pun."

"I'm sure you will," Kakashi said. "But while you're doing that, I would like you to come at me. All three of you, in fact."

"Like…a spar?" Sakura asked.

"Ah, not exactly," Kakashi said. "Spar implies that both sides will get something out of it. This is more like a demonstration."

"Oh, that's fucking it!" Naruto said, both hands adjusting his forehead protector. "This guy is seriously pissing me off!" He charged, feet kicking up grass and dirt as he flew across the training field. Some of the Shinobi watching cheered, eager to see the main event get underway.

Kakashi watched Naruto as he ran. The boy wasn't particularly fast, even for a newly minted Chunin, and he cocked one fist back so early that he was basically shouting his intent to open with a right hook. By the time he was within striking range Kakashi had already settled into a comfortable defensive stance, knees bent, arms outstretched. He caught Naruto's punch, and then broke the blond's nose with a swift jab.

Naruto stumbled back, shouting in surprise, and suddenly Sasuke was rocketing past him. The Uchiha was faster, that much was for sure, and he feinted before committing to a kick, giving Kakashi less time to react. It didn't matter, of course. Kakashi stepped backwards, avoiding the kick, then stepped back in and forced Sasuke onto the defensive with a quick furry of punches. Sasuke battered one, two, three away, but then one slipped through his guard and the whole thing fell apart. Kakashi thumped him twice, hard, in the chest, split his lip with an uppercut, and then pivoted smoothly to intercept Naruto's next reckless charge. The blond leapt high, throwing a kick at the side of his head, but it was trivial for Kakashi to block the blow with his forearm. Naruto fell, landing heavily on his hands, and tried to use them as a base to launch a spinning kick from an oblique angle. It wasn't a bad trick, but Kakashi kicked one of his hands out from under him and sent the boy's chin to the dirt.

"Sakura, your comrades are getting their asses kicked," Kakashi sang, just as the girl made her first foray into the combat. Immediately, he saw why she had preferred to hang back. Of the three she was the slowest, and her punches, though well placed, lacked power. Her form was textbook, but she flowed from movement to movement just as the book had taught her, with no adaptation to the situation she faced. He turned aside a few of her punches then shot forward, catching her by the throat and lifting her up into the air before bringing her down hard to the ground below.

Footsteps behind him, three pairs. From the speed he could tell that one was Sasuke, the other two Naruto. He whirled to face them. Footsteps meant elemental clones, but what type?

Sasuke, the faster of the two, reached him first. He was more hesitant in his attack this time, trying to draw Kakashi in, distract him so that Naruto and his clone could do their work. Smart – he kept his head in combat. In a demonstration of combat, at least. But Kakashi wasn't about to give it to him that easily. He pressed the attack, slamming his elbow into Sasuke's cheek and then his knee into the boy's stomach. With Sasuke momentarily incapacitated he turned back to the two Narutos, eyes searching.

There. His nose, melting like wax from a candle. Telltale sign of a not-yet mastered water clone technique. It would be slower than the real Naruto, so Kakashi turned his attention to the second hyperactive blond, who was leaping at him with a savage roar – only to explode into a thrashing mass of electrical energy. Kakashi's eyes widened, and his hand made the one-handed lightning seal – pinky, middle and pointer extended – with only a moment to spare. His chakra guided the voltage through his coils down to the ground below, leaving him surprised but unharmed.

"Two different clones!" He shouted, throwing himself towards the water clone. "Impressive!" He rolled under Naruto's clumsy swing, sweeping the boy's leg out with one hand as he came up. The clone fell forward, arms pinwheeling, and Kakashi dropped backwards, driving his elbow into the jacketed back. The thing burst like a balloon, water soaking the grass below it, but Kakashi was already rolling backwards, feet coming up over his head and finding the ground again. "Not bad, Naruto!" He needed to watch the boy – it was far easier to discover the type of clone when they were being made.

Before he could locate Naruto on the battlefield, however, Sasuke and Sakura required his attention. They came from opposite directions, Sasuke deliberately slowing himself so that they attacked simultaneously. A good effort – they were all learning. Kakashi blocked Sakura's punch and leaned backwards just a fraction of an inch to avoid Sasuke's, then side flipped back towards Sakura. His heel caught Sakura's head in a brutal sledgehammer blow, throwing her back to the dirt. Somehow though, Sasuke managed to catch his leg with a kick as he came down on it, and a moment later Kakashi was joining Sakura on the ground.

"Out of the way!" Naruto shouted, diving towards Kakashi. The Jonin tried to roll but Sakura had a death grip on his flak jacket, and so he was forced to instead catch Naruto with his feet, guiding the blond over his own body and throwing him past. He snaked his arm around Sakura's own and twisted, forcing the girl to disengage with a cry of pain, and then only barely managed to dodge out of the way of several overhead blows Sasuke was raining down.

Kakashi sprung backwards, finding his feet again, eyes taking in the situation. Sakura was still on one knee, recovering. Sasuke was charging in again, refusing to give him a moment's rest. Naruto stood off behind, and with a single hand seal summoned three clones in a puff of smoke.

Not a scrap of elemental chakra to be seen. That made it easy. Yin clones were a potent distraction, but as long as Kakashi didn't let Naruto turn it into a shell game he could safely ignore the doubles. He kept the real Naruto in his sight as he countered Sasuke's assault. The Uchiha heir was absolutely refusing to give ground, and though they had only had three brief clashes prior, he was already beginning to predict and adapt to Kakashi's languid, reactive style. He low kicked, then hopped to the other foot and high kicked. Kakashi danced backwards to avoid both blows. The Narutos were drawing closer now, but the kid hadn't bothered to even try to swap places with one of his doubles. Kakashi could see the real one in the back, blood still dripping from his crooked nose. He turned back to Sasuke, sending him spinning with a left hook too fast for the Uchiha to counter, and then took off towards Naruto.

The first clone didn't even have time to blink before Kakashi sped past him. The second tried to skid to a stop, but couldn't shed momentum fast enough to get in Kakashi's way. The third stood directly between him and the real Naruto, eyes narrowed, fists raised. Kakashi didn't even slow. He'd sprint right through the double and catch Naruto before he could-

The clone-

Punched him in the face.

Kakashi's momentum kept him moving forward and he fell onto his ass, sliding across the field. It only took him a moment to spin until he was balanced on his hands and feet, body completely parallel to the ground. Something was wrong.

He saw the crowd watching – saw the servants laugh and talk among themselves as if they couldn't believe Hatake Kakashi had just run into a haymaker. The Shinobi though – they knew enough to be confused.

Naruto stood above him, cracking his knuckles. Blood from his nose dribbled off his chin, and when he smiled, there was a bloody red gash through the field of white teeth. "What the hell was that?" Kakashi asked him, still not moving.

"You should feel lucky, neh?" Naruto asked. "To be the very first to face my completed Shadow Clone Technique!"

The three Naruto's flanked him, and in an instant Kakashi saw it. All three stood on grass flattened beneath their weight. All three cast shadows. "Believe it!" They shouted in unison.

And then, they descended.

Kakashi dashed out of the way pulling shuriken from his pouch. Three shuriken flew in a wide arc, and the three "Shadow Clones" burst simultaneously into puffs of smoke.

They really weren't elemental clones. Sage. Kakashi almost called a stop to the whole exercise, to run through the implications of this, but then Sakura came towards him with a chain alive in her hands and he realized that he didn't want this to stop.

He was actually…kind of having fun.

The chain wrapped around his forearm, and when he tried to yank Sakura forward he found that she had anchored herself to the ground with the wall walking technique. Naruto roared and raced forward, forming the same handseal that had summoned his last shadow clones – the middle and pointer fingers of both hands extended, overlapping like a cross. Kakashi could've thrown a shuriken to force Naruto to drop the seal, but he let the technique finish instead. He really was curious. Elemental clones tended to excel on one field while being weak in others – earth clones were slow but durable, for example, the opposite of wind clones. But the shadow clones seemed to be perfect copies of the original, with all their speed, power and maneuverability. Not as tough as earth clones, but better in every other area – and they could speak.

Sasuke and three Narutos descended on him as Sakura held him fast. Well, Kakashi had been in tighter spots before. He pulled on the chain, and even if he couldn't dislodge Sakura from this angle, he could at least draw his trapped hand closer to his free one – close enough to form hand seals.

"Naruto! Get down!" Sasuke shouted, just as Kakashi felt the heat roar to life in his lungs. He exhaled fire, a stream of orange and red that engulfed two of the Narutos, who leapt in front of the third to block the onslaught of flame.

"Are you psychotic?" Naruto shouted, checking his clothes for anything that might have caught alight. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"I don't know about kill," Kakashi said. He pulled hard on the chain again, and this time Sakura didn't have to focus to resist. She came stumbling forward, so he snapped the chain into her face and then slipped his arm free. "Scorch you a little, maybe. First degree burns, at most."

"Fuckin…" Naruto muttered, gritting his teeth. He slammed his hands together and Kakashi darted forward, disrupting the seal with a well-placed jab. Sasuke closed in from behind, very eager to join in on the action, and so Kakashi obliged…by sidestepping his charge and letting him punch Naruto full in the gut.

"I hate you," Naruto wheezed.

"Less whining," Sasuke said, whirling on Kakashi and brining his hands up. "More fighting."

"You could at least say sorry!"

Kakashi heard the telltale clink of metal against metal behind him, and bent backwards to avoid a lash from Sakura's chain. "This is starting to annoy me," he said, plucking the chain out of the air and dancing towards Sakura before she could try to use it against him. She flailed at him, trying to force him back, but he juked the punch and slipped around her, winding the chain around both her wrists and then pinning her arms to her side.

Sakura gasped, struggling to break free, but she had neither the speed nor the strength for it. Sasuke came in again, but despite an excellent angle he couldn't stop Kakashi from intercepting his kicks with Sakura's face.

"Gotta stop hitting your own comrades, Sasuke," Kakashi said, not missing the frustration that flashed across those picture perfect Uchiha features. He hefted Sakura up into the air, and despite her very vocal protests hurled her in Naruto's general direction.

"Come on now," he said to Sasuke, motioning the boy forward. "When are you going to start taking this seriously?"

Sasuke bent low and rocketed forward, not even trying to hide the rage now. He came at Kakashi with a newfound ferocity, fury in every movement. His hands flashed through seals, and suddenly one hand was engulfed in lightning. He whipped his arm forward and the lightning flew through the air like a spear – but again Kakashi made the lightning seal, and again the electricity flowed through his body before dispersing into the dirt. "You've got to try harder than-"

Kakashi whirled, suddenly very much aware of a lack of footsteps behind him. If Sakura and Naruto weren't pressing into close range by now, it could only be because they had tricks up their sleeves.

Of course, he was right. A Naruto flew through the air towards him, having jumped the distance rather than run in order to mask the sound of his approach. His mouth was open in a soundless scream, and while based on the trajectory of his flight he was about to barrel bodily into Kakashi, he made no move to tackle or–

Kakashi's hands were weaving seals before his conscious mind was fully through that train of thought. He dropped to one knee and slammed his palms to the dirt, and the view of a quickly approaching Naruto was suddenly blocked by a rising wall of earth, as high as Kakashi was tall and as wide as his wingspan.

An explosion rocked the earth wall, blowing away grass and dirt in chunks. Fire clones too.

No, Kakashi most certainly wouldn't be bored with these three.

Still, they were entering the point of diminishing returns here, and so when Sasuke sprinted around the side of the earth wall, Kakashi finally started fighting in earnest.

Sasuke swung, but Kakashi nudged his elbow aside and worked his way through several of the most basic upper body katas. Five hits. Ten hits. Fifteen hits. Each blow struck true, Kakashi's fists practically bounced off the Uchiha's face and torso as he forced Sasuke to take backwards step after backwards step, until finally the boy could take it no longer and collapsed backwards into the grass. Kakashi drew a kunai, spun it on his finger once for effect, and buried it in the ground right beside Sasuke's ear. "Dead," he said.

Naruto and Sakura didn't look particularly eager to come at him after that, but to their credit they came. Sakura was dispatched with a single chop to the side of the neck, and Naruto was kept out of punching range with a liberal application of Kakashi's far longer arms. Kakashi finally managed to get a grip on the blonde's shirt and forced him to the dirt, at which point he landed three quick punches to Naruto's chest. Even through the armor of the flak jacket, Naruto was reduced to a coughing mess. Kakashi drew two more kunai, threw them each into the ground near his student's prone bodies, and said again, "dead."

Then he turned to the crowd and bowed low, right fist to left palm. It was important for an artist to acknowledge his fans after all.

The gathered servants and Shinobi responded with polite applause. Satisfied, Kakashi turned back to his students, who were currently in the process of picking themselves up out of the dirt and getting their wind back. "Not a bad first effort," Kakashi said, taking a seat in front of them. That got a few surly glares, which he was all too happy to ignore. "Let's get down to brass tacks then. Did we all learn something?"

"That you're a sadist?" Naruto offered.

"That you like putting on a show," Sasuke said.

Kakashi smiled at them. "Both true!" He said. "But answer the question I asked. I want to see if you can self-analyze." He pointed first to Sakura, since she had been relatively quiet the entire time. "You start."

Sakura took a moment to consider before speaking, which he appreciated. All too often Chunin would leap to words without worrying about thought. "I…wasn't very useful," she said finally. "I have weapons, techniques, but they're not much suited for schoolyard brawls." She shrugged. "I'm a scientist, first and foremost."

"No," Kakashi told her, "you're a Shinobi." He understood where she was coming from – becoming a scientist without first becoming a Chunin meant a life of coffee runs and compiling test data – but she had to understand the consequences of her ambition. "That is your profession. Your life. It's inevitable that you will face a situation in which you have to kill or be killed."

Sakura swallowed, but nodded.

"That's not to say that every confrontation has to be a schoolyard brawl," Kakashi said, "but in this line of work you won't always be able to choose the circumstances of your battles. You have to be prepared. You have to be able to adapt."

"I get it," Sakura said. "I mean, I understand. I always knew, I guess, that this, you know, was coming some day." Her brow furrowed, and she bit her lip. "I felt…slow. And weak."

Kakashi nodded slowly. "You were. But physical training will fix that."

Sakura paled. "Please don't make me run."

"Don't worry," Kakashi said. "There'll be plenty of push-ups, to combat the monotony."

"I'll fall behind on my research," Sakura said, burying her face in her knees.

"You will," Kakashi admitted. "I never said it would be easy. You're a newly minted Chunin though, these kinds of things happen." He turned to Naruto. "And you? Any insights?"

"I'm trying," Naruto said, "but I think back and…you're just a blur. And even when I could see what you were doing, I didn't know how to handle it."

"If lacking Heaven, seek wisdom. Be prepared," Kakashi murmured.

Naruto frowned. "What?"

"An old saying," Kakashi said. "What I told Sakura is true. You have to be physically capable. But," he tapped his temple with one finger, "Shinobi is a mental job too. You need to know what you're facing, and how to counter it. Very often the difference between life and death will be your knowledge. You have variety, at least, for a Chunin. A kind of variety, anyway, with all the clones. I saw water, lightning, fire and your…" he waved his hands, "shadow clones. I'm assuming they're some kind of yang expression?"

Naruto looked to Sakura. "It's a little more complicated than that," she said. "I have notes."

"I'd like to take a look at them," Kakashi said. "If Naruto is alright with that, of course."

"Yeah, why not?" The blond said.

"This isn't a decision to take lightly," Sasuke said. "The shadow clone is your clan technique now. You have to be careful with its secrets."

"Oh, yeah" Naruto said. "I keep forgetting to think about it that way." He crossed his arms, regarding Kakashi suspiciously for a moment. "I still think it's okay," he said. "Kakashi's our teacher, and if he can make the Shadow Clone better then it's worth the risk."

Well, _Kakashi_ wasn't quite _Kakashi-sensei_ , but it was a sight better than _lazy bastard_ or its hypothetical pun equivalent.

Sasuke shrugged. "It's your decision, Koji-kun."

Naruto made a face. "Could you not call me that?"

"Even if I weren't heir, _-kun_ would be a proper-"

"Not _–kun_ , dipsh…" he trailed off, mouth working soundlessly for a moment as Sakura glared daggers at him. "I meant Koji."

Sasuke shook his head. "You're the one who has yet to come up with a clan name. It's been weeks."

"I can come up with plenty of names!" Naruto said, waving Sasuke off. "We just got our asses kicked together. You can use my given name."

"I'll take it under consideration."

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"Well, if Naruto has no objection to me looking through the Shadow Clone notes then I'd like to do so as soon as possible," Kakashi said. "I didn't think yang clones were possible, so I'm very much looking forward to the theory behind this one." He pointed at Naruto. "Speaking of theory, that's where you're going to be spending most of your time."

"Theory?" Naruto practically choked on the word. "Can't Sakura do it?"

"Well, that would very thoroughly defeat the point," Kakashi said, and now it was his turn to roll his eyes. "So no. It won't be all reading though. You clearly need to be walked through your taijutsu basics again…hell, we might just start you from scratch with a whole new style…and you'll want a crash course on small unit close quarters, seeing as you _are_ the small unit."

Naruto nodded. "I guess that doesn't sound so bad."

"It will be, if I'm doing my job right," Kakashi said. "Which is no guarantee, admittedly." He looked over to Sasuke. "Do you have anything to share with the class?"

"Variety."

Kakashi waited, and after a few moments the Uchiha deigned to elaborate. "I have a few fire techniques," he said, "and a few lightning. The fire…not suited for combat with teammates in close proximity. The lightning, you were able to neutralize."

"It's a useful trick," Kakashi said. "Easy to learn, harder to put into practice into a fight. Variety. Sure. I imagine you master ninjutsu quickly enough that it shouldn't take too long to build you a solid foundation."

Sasuke grunted. Kakashi decided to take that as an affirmative. "That should be the lesson plan for the next few months, at least. Who knew this teaching thing would be so easy?"

-OOO-

As it turned out, "this teaching thing" was very much not so easy.

The four of them spent the rest of the day and well into the night training, running through the very basics that Kakashi had outlined in the wake of their spar. Sakura's program was simple enough, since it was mostly just exercise, and she had to leave early to take a shift at the lab anyway. Naruto and Sasuke were different beasts entirely.

Kakashi quickly discovered a disheartening truth – that when you were a genius, as he liked to consider himself, it made it difficult to understand the struggles of those who weren't supernaturally gifted. He ran Naruto through a few basic katas and left him to practice on his own, only to realize after an hour that the boy had absorbed almost nothing from his demonstrations and had spent the time drilling horrendous footwork into his muscle memory.

Sasuke was a little better in this regard, able to absorb large quantities of information seamlessly, but for the first time in his life he was working on techniques outside his comfort zone, and he quickly grew frustrated when he hit a roadblock. Kakashi, who had never really struggled with any ninjutsu technique that he wasn't in the middle of inventing, could do little but shrug his shoulders and suggest that Sasuke try again. But better this time, of course.

Eventually countless attempts at ninjutsu took their toll physically and Sasuke stumbled off to sleep, exhausted. Only Naruto remained, running kata after endless kata – until he too collapsed into the grass, gasping for lungfulls of cold night air.

"Well you certainly don't lack for spirit," Kakashi said, taking a seat beside the boy. He was exhausted himself, after all of that, but he'd be damned if he showed it. Power could and must survive the occasional display of personal weakness – but it never hurt to build a foundation of strength beforehand.

"I have…" Naruto panted, "so much."

Kakashi cocked his head and looked at him, but said nothing.

"Two months ago," Naruto said, staring up at the stars, "All I had was hope. Reckless…stupid hope. A year ago, I had way less than that. Almost nothing. Sakura…Sasuke…they've given me so much. I feel like I can't even hold it." He shook his head. "But I will. If I have to work myself to exhaustion every day, I will."

It was so strange. Like looking into a funhouse mirror, where everything was flipped upside down. How much had Kakashi been born with? How little had he understood the value of it all, until tragedy had forced the realization upon him? The thought gnawed at him until he forced himself to laugh. "All this from a boy who can't even choose a clan name."

"I said it already, didn't I?" Naruto asked, scowling. "I've thought of plenty of names. All I do is think about them…I have a ton of ideas, I'm just…" he lapsed into a frustrated, fragile silence.

"Worried you'll choose the wrong one?" Kakashi offered. "There are really no wrong answers here Naruto. I mean, there absolutely are, but-"

Naruto shook his head. "It's not that. I'm just selfish."

Kakashi frowned but said nothing. If Naruto wanted to explain, he would do so on his own time.

It took a minute or two, but the blond did speak up again. "I keep thinking back to the wedding," he said. "When Sasuke was talking about the Uchiha, and the Hatake, and the Mitarashi…and I remember thinking how much meaning there was there. All the Shinobi clans have so much history in their name. It's not just sounds and brushstrokes…it's a connection, back and back and back. It's a legacy. It's a…" he held his hands up, as if trying to grasp something. "A promise. And every name I think of is hollow. And empty."

"You're starting from nothing," Kakashi said. "That's not a bad thing. The clan is yours to shape. The promise yours to make."

"I know," Naruto said. "I know. It's for my kids, I guess." He frowned. "Too weird to think about. But…it's for the people that come after me. So they don't have to suffer a name that's actually a warning. I want that for them! That's why I say I'm selfish…because I don't want to be the one who has to build it all." His hands fell back to his sides. "I want the connection. Back and back and back. I want the promise made to me, for me to make in turn. Or else it's…it's not the same." He exhaled, long and heavy.

Kakashi considered this for a moment. Considered this boy, who had had nothing, and now had so much, and still wanted so much more. And then, against his better judgment, he spoke.

"Long ago," Kakashi began, "when the first Hokage founded this village, the other mighty clans raced to imitate him, creating their own villages. Only eight still survive. The four other elemental nations, the seats of the other Kage – and the four demilitarized zones that buffer the five nations. But there were others. In the early days, there were dozens."

Naruto watched him with eyes of deep blue.

"Few survived the early years," Kakashi said, "and even fewer the first Kage summit, which drew the maps for this new age. But…there were some. There was one, far to the east of here, in a strait that connects Tazuna Bay to the Sea of Clouds. And within this village, there was a clan."

"Kakashi-sensei, I don't really know what you're talking about," Naruto asked. "There's nothing to the east except Kirigakure and the Land of Water."

Kakashi shook his head, signaling for Naruto to wait. "The village fell," he said. "And the clan was scattered across the world. Some went east, to Water. Others came west – to us, and beyond us, to Wind and Earth. Some even went north, to Lightning. Never again would they bear their name…but they survived. And in time, this name that they had held and lost…came to mean something new. Something greater, maybe, than it had ever meant before. Any child could look to the ruins of that village and think that maybe it was the home of his ancestors. That he was descended from the clan that scattered." Kakashi sighed. "A clan for the clanless. A home for the homeless."

Naruto was silent for a long time, drinking in Kakashi's words. Finally, he looked back up to the sky, a look of deep concentration on his face. "What was the clan called?"

"The Uzumaki."

"Oh," Naruto said, "huh."

It was not until several minutes later that Kakashi realized he had fallen asleep.

"A man's got to have a family," Kakashi said, to the night and the stars high above. Then he sighed and slowly, laboriously, worked his way to his feet. Naruto was scrawny and undersized for his age, and it was easy to carry him to the Hatake compound where he and Rai were staying until construction was complete on their own home. He dumped Naruto on the front step – and since, miraculously, that didn't wake the kid up, he knocked on the door.

By the time someone answered, he was halfway out of the Uchiha compound.

Winter nights in Konohagakure were eerily quiet. Normally the air would be filled with the sound of cicadas, but for the few weeks out of the year that the village could be considered truly cold, a stifling silence drowned the cobblestone streets. Kakashi made his way across the rooftops, not pausing to greet the few Shinobi he saw out, running errands or passing away the hours of guard duty. He was exhausted, and he wanted nothing more than to collapse into his bed and sleep half tomorrow's lesson away.

But he did not return to the dingy apartment he called home. Instead he angled towards the base of the great mountain. It had been there that Konohagakure had begun, the village sprouting out of it like a fan made from gradually expanding semi-circles. The lack of centralized planning made the reality far more complicated than that of course, with streets twisting and turning and weaving back in on themselves, but the basic structure held true even today, over two centuries after the Founding.

But Konohagakure had not merely expanded away from the great mountain. A Shinobi had many uses for the privacy and security provided by underground structures after all, and so the village's earliest architects had also carved expansive stretches of tunnel into the mountain itself. It was said that tunnels and substructures that crisscrossed the mountain and land beneath Konohagakure was another village unto itself – a vast shadow village in which the true Shinobi work was done.

But of all those underpasses and hidden rooms, none were more ancient or secure than the ones to which Kakashi headed now. He skidded to a stop at the base of the mountain, long stretches of which were covered in paintings and carvings to mark the history of the village. In front of him stood Uchiha Madara in the glory of his prime – sharingan eyes blazing a vivid red, his war-fan held aloft, the heavenly black flame blazing around him. Uchiha Madara, who together with the first had founded Konohagakure. Uchiha Madara, who had established ROOT.

Kakashi cast a look around, to ensure he was alone. The only other person near him was the ROOT lookout stationed in a nearby tree, and Kakashi gave him a jaunty wave before turning back to the mountain. He wove hand signs slowly, deliberately, and then pressed both palms to the rock. Then, muscles straining, he spread the rock aside like a sliding double door.

The weight of the stone was such that he could only manage a crack, but that was enough to slip through. A great rumble echoed around him as the mountain's natural state reasserted itself, and for a moment Kakashi stood in infinite blackness – but then he touched his hand to the wall, and channeled chakra into the seals he knew were there, and suddenly dim light raced across the wall, illuminating a path forward.

Kakashi followed it for some time, deeper and deeper into the rock. Occasionally he was passed by others, Shinobi in cloaks and masks, but never did they acknowledge each others presence. The only sound was of soft footsteps, echoing down the tight hallway.

An iron set securely into the wall marked the end of his journey. He rapped on the door half a dozen times in a precise, complex pattern, and a moment later the door swung open. A Shinobi, his face covered by a blank white mask, watched him for a moment before stepping aside to let him through.

The room that Kakashi stepped into was large and well lit. One wall was covered in a massive map of Konohagakure, different parts of the village marked with different colors of ribbon in a pattern Kakashi couldn't decipher. A large wooden table in the middle of the room held more maps and various other papers. Sitting on the far side, elbows leaning heavily on the wood, was Shimura Danzo.

Danzo had a tanned, weather-beaten face and buzzed black hair. A pair of scars formed an x on his chin, and his right eye was hidden behind an eye patch – and he was old. As a general rule, career Shinobi did not get old. They died either in their prime on the battlefield, or just past it from injuries sustained in the line of duty. Those who managed to survive often became more feared in their age, for although the years could take a man's strength and speed, they bestowed an experience and perspective that could not even be imagined in youth.

Shimura Danzo had forged that experience and perspective into a knife, and with it he had cut away the rot within Konohagakure. He had led ROOT since before Kakashi had been born, the second most powerful man in Fire for over thirty years. Danzo's gaze settled on him, and Kakashi was seventeen again, Rin's blood dripping from his hands onto the cold stone floor.

"You're late," Danzo said.

"Apologies," Kakashi said, bowing respectfully. "Training ran long."

Danzo made a low, disapproving sound in the back of his throat. Then he gestured to the table. Kakashi took a seat, folding his legs under him, and waited for the man to speak.

"I do not want reasons to doubt your dedication," Danzo said. His eye was the surface of a lake that light couldn't penetrate. "I will not have you forgetting where your loyalties lie."

The response was automatic. "I am the empty vessel. I am the clay soldier in which the will of fire burns." And then, less automatic, "I am the Hokage's man, as ever."

**Born Weapons will return in  
** **Arc II  
** **I Am A Monster**


	5. Chapter 5

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc II  
** **I Am A Monster  
** **Chapter V  
Savages  
**

"At the moment of birth, your fate was written in the blood of your ancestors."  
-Hozuki Gengetsu  
Second Mizukage

Sakura wheezed and spat a glob of blood and phlegm to the grass, praying silently for the world to stop spinning.

Naruto squatted in front of her, elbows on his knees, worry suffusing his features. His lips were moving but no sound was coming out – all she could hear was a constant, high whine.

This continued for about ten seconds before his voice started to come back. "Really, really sorry," he was saying. "I thought you were gonna go left and then you went-"

"Right," she croaked, lying down gently on the grass. Already it was growing nearly out of control – spring had come early to Konohagakure, bringing with it an explosion of green both above its residents' heads and below their feet. "I think that's enough sparring for today."

"Ah, fair enough," Naruto said, taking a seat next to her. She watched the ease with which he moved with no small amount of disbelief. They had begun before dawn, and now the sun was nearly in the middle of the sky, and yet he hardly looked winded. He pushed aside a handful of sweat slicked hair, which had grown long enough to fall over his forehead protector and frame his face, and smiled cheerily down at her. "You really got me a couple times there."

Sakura shook her head and smiled, going over the fight in her head. It was clear that she was getting better – stronger, faster, more confident making decisions in combat – but though her progression was steady, it was equally slow. She was competent enough to catch Naruto off guard if he let his mind wander, but when his head was in the game he had a tendency to tear her apart. "I think I'm finally adjusting to the new style Kakashi-sensei is teaching you," she said after a bit of reflection. "It's so different from what we learned in basic, and my instincts are slow to adjust."

Naruto chewed on the thought. "Your problem isn't your instincts," he said. "The opposite, really. You think too much."

"My mind is the only advantage I have," Sakura said. "If I think less I lose my only shot at actually beating you."

"Maybe," Naruto said, shrugging. "Kakashi-sensei says everyone fights different. But you need the speed, and not thinking is always faster than thinking, neh?"

Sakura laughed. "Neh," she echoed. "Now come on, let's get some food before I pass out."

"Finally! I thought you'd never say it." Naruto leapt to his feet and offered her his hand, pulling her up with a casual strength. The two began the long, winding walk back to the central Uchiha building, where servants would be preparing lunch.

Sakura was surprised at how effortlessly her feet followed the path. It had been only a few months since she had become Mitarashi, and already her body was adapting to her new home – to the geography and ritual and culture that was her life. "Speaking of thinking," she said as they walked, "what's Kakashi-sensei got you reading now."

Naruto scowled and stuck out his lower lip, interlocking his fingers behind his head. "Chakra theory," he said, as if merely saying the words offended him deeply. "I thought history was bad, but oh man Sakura, this is so much worse. I spent all last night reading about some guy name Yagura and his stupid rules."

"Yagura's three laws?" Sakura asked, arching an eyebrow. She declined to mention that she had memorized Yagura's three laws at age eight – they all had their areas of expertise. "Remember any of them?"

Naruto's face screwed up in concentration. "Ah, the first one says that all chakra is naturally yin/yang," he said after a moment. "And then…the second one says that the higher amount of gathered chakra," he said, "the higher…uh, percentage that is trans…trans…"

"Transmuted," Sakura offered.

"Right, transmuted…into chakra of the gatherer's elemental affinity." He shrugged. "And I'll learn the other one tonight."

Sakura clapped politely, and he swatted at her. "I'm working on it, I'm working on it," he said. "It's just so boring. And none of it means anything, it's just words on paper." He scowled. "I'm never gonna be able to keep up with Sasuke if I have to spend half my time reading. He already spars with Kakashi-sensei more than with me, and it's only getting worse."

"You've got to stop that," Sakura said

"Stop what?"

"Comparing yourself to him. It doesn't help anything and you know it." She gave him her best knowing stare, but his scowl only deepened. "Besides," she said, when it became clear that he wasn't willing to concede the point. "This stuff isn't just words on paper. Chakra theory is real. You use it every day."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Bullshit. I mean, I know I use chakra theory, obviously, fine, but that's not Yagura's stupid laws or whatever."

Sakura held up a hand and gathered chakra to her palm, as much as she could manage. It swirled through the vessels in her body, concentrating, until her skin practically rippled with with suppressed power. Truth be she didn't have much left in the tank after hours spent sweating and sparring – especially considering her reserves were low in the best of times – but it was enough that Naruto twitched when she touched her palm to his cheek.

"I hate that feeling," he muttered, rubbing at the spot she had touched him. "Your chakra's so hot."

"Exactly!" Sakura said. "Because I'm a fire affinity. My chakra naturally trends towards fire, so the more I gather the more of it becomes like fire."

Naruto shook his head. "But I summon chakra all the time. A lot of it. And it never gets windy, or anything."

"Well, no," Sakura admitted. "It's not _that_ pronounced, Naruto. For the chakra to manifest physically as the element you'd have to be gathering so much of it that…well, nobody actually gathers that much. It's all basically theoretical-"

"See!" Naruto crowed. "I can't actually use it every day if it's theoretical, can I?"

Sakura took a deep breath. She had known Naruto for over a year now, watched him learn five different types of clone techniques and then invent a new one…and yet she still floundered whenever it came to explaining things to him. Countless lessons and still all she could do was keep moving until something clicked for him. "Just because it isn't physically manifesting doesn't mean it's not happening," she said. "When you gather chakra, no matter what amount, some of it is transmuting automatically to wind chakra…and the more you summon, the more is transmuted."

"So what?"

"Come on, you've got to see where this is going," she said, rubbing her temples. "Okay. You want to do a fire clone. You gather up chakra, which is naturally yin/yang chakra – that's the first rule, right?"

"Sure," Naruto said. "Cause it's mental and physical energy you mix together. Yin ad Yang."

Sakura nodded. "Perfect. So you have yin/yang chakra, and to do the technique, you transmute it to fire chakra. But let's say you want to do a higher level technique…oh, or more fire clones at the same time. Let's say three, so you have to gather three times the amount of chakra, right?"

"I guess…"

"So according to the second rule…"

Naruto watched her plaintively, as if expecting that she might just finish the sentence, but after they took a dozen steps in patient silence he spoke up. "More of it is elemental chakra? Uh, wind chakra."

"Exactly. So instead of just transmuting from yin/yang to fire, you have to transmute from wind to yin/yang to fire. It's an extra step in the process-"

"It's just calming the meadow!" Naruto shouted suddenly. He was loud enough that several servants looked to them in surprise, and the blond's face suddenly went redder than it had ever been during their morning spar.

Sakura's eyebrows vanished beneath her bangs. "Calming the water?"

"It's a…" Naruto made small circles with his hands, as if trying to shape invisible clay. "Sort of like a thing I have, to help me concentrate. A mental trick. Sort of like a…happy place?" His flush deepened. "That sounds stupid."

"It doesn't," Sakura said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Talk me through it."

White teeth peeked out from behind a hesitant smile. "When we were learning how to gather chakra, back in basic," he said, "I had a lot of trouble concentrating. We were in those dingy little rooms, and all I wanted was to be outside, you know?"

Sakura nodded, though she didn't quite know. She had always loved the classrooms – the smell of ink and paper and old wood, the quiet scratching of pencils. But she could imagine that Naruto hadn't found the same joy in it that she had.

"So, I liked to imagine I was in a meadow," Naruto continued, rubbing the back of his neck. "And…I dunno, when we started learning more basic chakra manipulation stuff, I'd go back to the meadow. So…" he shrugged. "Sometimes, when I gather lots of chakra, the meadow gets…less peaceful. I never really thought of it as windy, I guess, but it fits. And so before I do a big technique, I have to calm the meadow. Make it all peaceful. Right?"

That was when it clicked for her, as well. "It's your transmutation," she said. "From wind chakra back to yin/yang. That's exactly it, Naruto!" She punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to send him staggering. "And you said this stuff was useless."

"Well it's not like I knew I was already doing it," Naruto said, but instead of scowling he smiled. "If the book was as smart as you are, I'd have this shit down flat by now."

Sakura shook her head. "Just pay more attention," she said. "How many times does this have to happen before you realize that you get this stuff?"

Naruto thought about it a moment, brow furrowed. "I'd say at least a gazillion."

Sakura sighed and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out the air around her was rent by the endless bellow of a horn.

-OOO-

The Hokage's tower stood at the center of a fortress.

High walls of imposing stone encircled the white stone structure, endless strings of sealwork carved into the rock itself. Kakashi's eyes followed the marks as they wound their way around the battlements and then shot up the tower itself. They came to a rest, he knew, only at the tower's top floor. There Shinobi worked in round the clock shifts, always on high alert. At the first sign of danger, the ground in front of the walls would become a killing field the likes of which few Shinobi had ever seen – and this was merely the first and most obvious line of defense available to the Hokage. Many enemy Shinobi, seeking glory, had tried and failed to kill the Hokage from within his tower, and all had failed.

Kakashi took a moment, to consider that thought. All, or all but one. Certainly many questions still surrounded the death of the Fifth Hokage – but those were questions best kept to oneself.

Kakashi marked the Shinobi standing guard as he passed them. One pretended to sell fish, his disguise perfect save for his eyes, too sharp and dangerous. Another watched from the shuttered window of a nearby building – his long shift had made him careless, and the sunlight glinted unnaturally off some blade he had drawn. Yet another waited beneath the earth itself, prepared to leap out at a moment's notice. There would be more, of course, there always were. But today Kakashi had neither the time nor patience to find them. He approached the guard standing at the tower's entrance, a Hyuga with his Byakugan expressed. Her hair was buzzed short, and unlike most of the Hyuga clan, she opted to wear her forehead uncovered. Thick black lines formed the infamous Hyuga seal across pale skin.

"Hatake-sama," the woman said, her tone respectful but clearly surprised. "You're...early."

"What can I say, other than I'm full of surprises?" Kakashi asked, smiling. "Anything I should look out for while I'm up there?"

"They don't tell me anything sir," the Hyuga replied. Her pupil-less white eyes twitched in a manner Kakashi had come to associate with being rolled. "Besides, my shift just started. But I heard Might Guy had an appointment today."

Kakashi exhaled heavily and struggled against the temptation to turn on his heel and walk in the other direction. He was to be on his best behavior, he had reminded himself. It wasn't every day that one, even one as accomplished as himself, was called for a personal meeting with the Hokage. "I suppose I'll be very, very quiet then," he said, "and hope that I hear him coming in time."

"Best of luck, sir." The girl touched her right fist to her left palm and bowed, ever so slightly.

Kakashi mirrored the salute, walked past the girl, and focused chakra into his hands and feet. A moment later he was scaling the white stone of the tower exterior, making his way to the uppermost floors. There were stairs inside, of course, but they were terribly slow and inefficient. On busier days, the tower could be found practically swarming with Shinobi, like bees clinging to the exterior of a hive. Today however, things were quiet, and Kakashi passed only four other Shinobi using the same shortcut as he made his way up. Occasionally he would peek into windows, trying his best to guess at Guy's location. Accounting, on the tenth floor? Briefing, on the fifteenth? But there was no sign of the man.

"Can't ever be easy, can it," Kakashi grumbled under his mask. It was only a minute later that he reached his destination. Thick wooden beams supported a large, flat wooden porch that served as a dock of sorts for Shinobi traveling along the tower's exterior, and Kakashi let the chakra drain from his limbs as he slid back down to a horizontal surface.

The third floor from the tower's top served as a waiting area for those who sought audience with the Hokage, and it was as high as one could go by the tower's exterior – unless one particularly enjoyed the feeling of steel sliding through their flesh. A spacious , well lit room greeted Kakashi as he entered, rugs strewn across the floor so that those waiting could sit comfortably. The air smelled of tea and incense, pleasant despite Kakashi's knowledge was that its primary purpose was to mask the scent of poison gas in the walls. The Hokage's personal assistant, a young woman seated behind a desk, smiled at him. "Hatake-san," she said brightly. "We didn't expect you for some time yet!"

Try as he might, Kakashi couldn't summon up a glib deflection. He was too preoccupied with the creeping horror that subsumed him at the sight of a tall, man in green fatigues, his dark hair corralled into an immensely unfashionable bowl cut.

"Kakashi!" Guy bellowed, loud enough to shake the tower itself. He leapt to his feet and stuck out a thumb, a brilliant white smile stretching across his face. "When I saw I was scheduled right after you, I was sure we'd miss each other," the man said, his voice a baritone rumble more reminiscent of an oncoming storm than a man. "What great fortune that our paths should cross again!"

Fortune wasn't the word Kakashi would use. Might Guy was a Jonin like himself, one of only a handful in the village that could reasonably lay clam to being on Kakashi's level. He was a monster in human flesh, a slab of meat and muscle. Shoulders broad enough to build a house on, arms that strained mightily against the fabric of his fatigues. In recent years he had taken to wearing his flak jacket unzipped because it could no longer comfortably close around his thickly muscled chest.

He could've always requested a custom fit. But that wouldn't have sent the right message.

"Guy," he drawled. "You're...here." Then his eyes slid to the boy standing at Guy's side, and he blinked as if to clear his vision. "And you've cloned yourself."

That brought Guy to a great belly laugh, though Kakashi was failing to see what exactly was funny. A moment's examination revealed that clone was probably not the right word, as the boy's face looked nothing like the man's. It was narrower, with large, round eyes that peered out from two absolutely monstrous eyebrows, like twin caterpillars that had taken up residence on the boy's forehead. But his hair, his clothes, even his stance – in every way that it was possible for the boy to mirror Guy he had, even down to the bandages wrapped around his hands and forearms.

"Lee!" Guy said, turning to the boy. "Allow me to introduce you to the Lightning Fist! The hero of the Fifteen Day War! Konohagakure's brilliant white blade, the legendary Hatake Kakashi himself!" He beamed. "My rival."

I understand, Kakashi thought to himself, not for the first time. Why you did it, father. I finally get it.

Lee's reaction was instantaneous. He saluted, bowing so low that his nose nearly scraped the ground. "It is an honor, sir!" He said, in a voice so earnest that it almost made Kakashi feel bad for him. "Guy-sensei has spoken much of your exploits!"

"Well, Guy has a tendency to exaggerate," Kakashi said.

"My apologies, but I do not believe that is true!" Lee said. "Guy-sensei has been unfailingly honest with me since we first met."

There was something about his voice, the way he spoke, as if he had to think about each word before he spoke it. And his accent...so precise, so practiced. Kakashi's eyes flickered to Guy, but the Jonin's face betrayed nothing. "Then let's say I exaggerated when I told him about it all," Kakashi said. "That way everybody gets to play to type."

"Lee," Guy said, turning to his apprentice. "It occurs to me that you have not yet completed a challenge for today."

The boy's eyes seemed to shine with a sudden light. "That is true, Guy-sensei!" He said. "I will...I will run from the wall to this tower ten times! And I shall do the last lap on only my hands."

Kakashi's muscles shrieked at even the thought, but Guy only beamed. "Taking it light today I see!" He said. "Quite wise of you, Lee. All Shinobi must be careful to rest their bodies, lest their drive to succeed become their own worst enemy."

Kakashi had thought Lee's eyes had been shining before, but now he realized that that had only been a glimmer. "Thank you Guy-sensei!" The boy said, eyes like twin lighthouses. "I will begin immediately! At once!"

One moment he was there, and then the next he was gone. Kakashi blinked, instinct forcing chakra to his ears so that he could better track the boy's descent. Fast. Unbelievably fast. Faster than Kakashi or even Guy had been at his age.

He arched an eyebrow at Guy once the boy was far enough down the tower that they didn't risk being overheard. "What the hell was that?"

Guy stroked his chin, regarding Kakashi carefully. Then he took a seat on the plush rug beneath him, motioning for Kakashi to do the same. Kakashi sighed and rolled his eyes, but did as he was bid. When Guy had you cornered, it was best to go limp and let the current take you where it willed.

"His name is Rock Lee," Guy said when Kakashi had made himself comfortable. "He is my apprentice."

"Really," Kakashi said, his voice drier than a rock in Sunagakure. "You don't say."

"I...did not mean to have you meet him like this," Guy said, and Kakashi was surprised to see the man seem truly troubled. "The truth is...there is still much I would for Lee to achieve before he he met you. I think, in time, he could show you the error of your ways. Show you the value of passing one's knowledge down to the next generation." He reached down and grasped in massive fingers a delicate porcelain tea cup, steam rising into the air in languid waves.

Kakashi waited for Guy to take a sip before he spoke. "I have three apprentices, actually."

Say one thing for Might Guy, say that he never failed to entertain. The green-clad man spat tea halfway across the waiting room, a fact that did not fail to dismay the attendant terribly. "You-" Guy sputtered, wiping dribbles of tea from his chin, "you've taken – three?"

"What can I say?" Kakashi asked, unable to keep the smile from his eyes. "I'm a sucker for tradition. If the Sage took three disciples, why shouldn't I?"

"Deflect all you like," Guy said, placing his tea cup back down on its matching plate. He shook his head slowly. "I know you too well to believe that this is not truly momentous."

Kakashi sobered. "It wasn't my idea," he said after a moment of thought. "I'm not...hating it, though. I never imagined life in the village could hold so many surprises."

Guy chuckled. "Yes, they tend to evoke that feeling, don't they?" He cast a glance outside the window, and Kakashi's eyes followed his to tiny green figure, a blur across the rooftops far below.

Kakashi's eyes traveled back to Guy. "He's fast."

"I have never seen a Shinobi with more drive," Guy said, quiet. "He would work himself to death, were I not there to reign him in. Some days I wonder how much longer I can keep up with him."

Kakashi tried not to let the disquiet show on his face. He didn't succeed, not entirely. But that was why he wore the mask. "Someone who could give you a run for your money? Now I've seen everything."

"I...had everything planned out, Kakashi," Guy said. "A whole speech that I would give you. But now that you have your own students, I no longer know if it is necessary."

Kakashi stared at the space where Lee had been. "Wouldn't want you to waste all that preparation," he said, his nonchalance hollow even to his own ears. "Just spit it out, and I'll do my best to pretend I'm absorbing your wisdom."

Guy laughed again. "Yes," he said. "Thank you for indulging me, Kakashi." He was silent for a long time after that, ordering his thoughts. When he spoke again, his words with heavy with contemplation. "It is said that all men die twice," he said. "Once when their spirit leaves their body...and again when their teachings leave this world. Some even say that this is the true nature of the Sage's immortality, for even still we call him Sensei.

"When I was boy, and my head was filled with violence, I did not think on such high minded things. Life was the next battle, the next war. The words of my masters were tools for the shedding of my enemies' blood, and nothing more. When they passed bodily from this world, I went to the graves which bore their names and swore never to forget them. And yet I let them die just a little every day, for I hoarded their knowledge, their wisdom. It was not my intention, of course. I saw only the mission. Only the next foe, dead at my feet. I was arrogant and prideful and young, and believed that the teachings of my masters had found apotheosis in me. And then, one day, on a lonely road, I came across a farm. The snows had piled high that winter, and war had sucked the land dry, as it does."

Kakashi frowned. War? No war had touched Fire for nearly a decade.

If Guy noticed his confusion, he made no sign of it. "The family was starving," he continued, "and they begged me for coin. I intended to give them some money and pass on…but before I could go their oldest approached me, eager to demonstrate his talents. A farmer, bred for the hauling of rice, and yet I could see that he truly thought to impress me. It was all I could do not to laugh. Still, he had a zeal in him that that I could not help but respect. And so I accompanied him to a field and watched him carve stone with his fists."

"He had been trained before," Kakashi said. The breaking of rock was an important milestone in basic training, a sign that the Shinobi had honed his body through yang chakra.

Guy's smile was tight. "My first thought as well. But a false one. He had simply come to the stone each and every day until his hands bled anew."

Kakashi considered that for a long moment. "Well, it sounds unbelievable," he said. "And yet."

"And yet," Guy echoed. "I cannot describe the feeling that came over me, watching him. It was a certainty I had never before experienced. A certainty that I had failed my masters. A certainty that I had failed their teachings. What we are given, Kakashi, finds apotheosis in no man. There is only the next step." He exhaled, heavy. "I found Lee, and I saw in him the future of my art."

Kakashi watched this man, whom he had known since they were children together, speak. He had known Guy to be many things – relentless, exuberant, terrifying, embarrassing, unfailingly kind. And yet here, now, for the first time, he seemed...wise. And old. And very very tired.

"Where is he from, Guy?" Kakashi asked.

They were in the Hokage's tower. Here even the walls had ears, and so Guy merely met his eyes. "You know."

And Kakashi did. The accent, which strained against even the best attempts to hide it. Guy's comments about the war, and the snow. The demilitarized zones had been named such during the first Kage summit, when the founders of the elemental nations had met to codify the new world order. The zones had been established as buffer states, with each nation swearing to never establish a military presence within their borders – and with a few rare exceptions, they had maintained their promises in the 200 years since. It was not a perfect solution, of course. The zones were prone to instability, anarchy, terror. When villages did arise they tended to be quickly overthrown – and if they had any staying power, it was typically because they were being supported, if not outright controlled by, one of the elemental nations.

But even when an elemental nation controlled a demilitarized zone in all but name, there were lines that couldn't be crossed. Appearances that had to be maintained. A respected Leaf Jonin couldn't be discovered to be recruiting apprentices from the zones. Especially considering Konohagakure's track record on the issue of respecting the autonomy of the demilitarized zones. If it got out…

"It could be war" Kakashi said, almost to quiet to hear.

"Yes."

"Why risk that for a boy?"

"I have already told you." Guy's eyes flickered to him, then away. "You told me you have taken apprentices."

"I have. That wasn't a lie."

"And yet you still don't understand me," Guy said. "I had assumed, when you took a student, it would be because you had a similar revelation. Certainly there is no-one with the power to force you to become teacher, however many would wish it."

"I wasn't forced." Kakashi's fist clenched, but his face didn't so much as twitch. "They gave my father a funeral."

Guy took a moment to absorb that. "Your father is not a name on a rock."

"He wasn't," Kakashi said, "and now he is. Because of me." His mind flashed to Sakura, working herself to the bone to bring her vision of the future just a tiny bit closer. To Sasuke, striving at every moment to surpass perfection, to meet the impossible expectations left for him by Itachi, who had never had to truly to rule as Lord – only exist as an ideal, a promise. To Naruto, who thrashed and struggled to rip power from the hands of an unjust universe, one that had condemned him to fate no child should ever have to endure. "That's the closest to immortality I can bring him," he said, looking back to Guy. "It's what he wanted. This village was everything to him."

"Was it?" Guy asked. His tone was almost soft – not a word Kakashi had ever expected to use in reference to Might Guy.

He didn't answer. Instead he stood and stretched and waited, quiet noises from upstairs letting him know that somebody had just left the Hokage's office. Footsteps, nearly impossibly light, came closer, and a moment later Hatake Rai emerged from the stairwell leading up to the penultimate floor.

Uzumaki Rai now. He had to remember. She looked so much like the mother he had never met, a face he knew only from a painting in his father's hand. Even her eyes were the same. Most of the petty clans sworn to Uchiha had some strange quirk in their eyes, the result of continued interbreeding with the Uchiha line, and the Hatake's was a trend towards heterochromia. The left deep purple, the right light green. And yet the look within them was nothing like the painting of his mother. When Uzumaki Rai's eyes settled on him, they held only suspicion and scorn.

Kakashi inclined his head. "Rai-chan."

"Uncle." He was not her uncle, of course. They were only distantly related, by clan measures. Rather she had aged up the traditional "cousin" address to needle him about his age. Kakashi smiled despite himself. He was all too well acquainted with the thorns typical of young Shinobi. Her eyes followed him as he passed her on the way up the stairs, and when he reached the sliding wood door at the top, he could still feel her gaze on the back of his neck, like the tip of a knife cooled by night air.

Even Uchiha Sasuke, in all his power, could not truly make Kakashi Hatake again. He had shed that name a decade ago, in every way that mattered.

The ANBU – a member of the village's Special Assassination and Tactical Squad - stationed on the other side of the door slid it open at his approach, then closed it again behind him. The sensation of being watched vanished, and then abruptly reappeared, far stronger and more disorienting.

In the center of the room sat the Eighth in all his glory. He wore a cloak of pristine white, with a necklace of large red nagatama around his neck, and the red and white hat of his station sat casually atop his head as if it had been there since birth. His hair was dark but lacked the blue-black sheen so typical of the Uchiha clan, and pronounced tear troughs cut his face. At twenty-three, he was five years Kakashi's junior and the youngest Hokage in village history. But one would never guess it by looking at him – Itachi carried with him a patience and wisdom that belied his youth. He sat cross legged atop the Hokage's throne, a cushioned pillar of intricately carved wood that stood taller than a man, so that all were forced to raise their eyes to the man who wore the hat.

Beneath him stretched the world. The wooden slats of the floor sprung to color, depicting the geography of the elemental nations. Sapphire blue marked waters, rich green the forests, and brilliant yellow the vast deserts to the east – colors too deep and true to be mere paints. This office had been grown by the First himself, willed into existence with the bloodline he had commanded, and the color was held within the wood itself. The only paint were the white lines across it – the political borders, which necessitated a new application every few years. The map was oriented towards the Hokage, so that visitors entered at the north and saw the whole thing upside down.

Not upside-down, boy. The day you allow any one angle to become the default is the day you stop finding other angles.

Kakashi's mouth twitched under his mask, a smile more like an old scar than an expression. Every day, he lost a little more of his father to the mists of memory – but always the man's voice stuck with him, soft and gravelly and utterly confident in every word it spoke.

Across the elemental nations were assembled the Hokage's council, four Shinobi handpicked by Itachi himself that asissted his efforts in running the country. There was the Sixth, of course, Sarutobi Hiruzen, bound to serve the office even in retirement. Hokage rarely lived to see their successors rule, but this would be the old man's second time guiding Konohagakure from behind the hat. Were Kakashi a more superstitious man, he might've wondered what tragedy Hiruzen had doomed Itachi to.

Fire. Winds. Malice like a physical force, his brain screaming, nerves raw, fear so deep and dark that he couldn't tell which way was up, and then a roar that cracked the trunks of the trees around him, and he screamed-

Kakashi blinked, and he was back. Hiruzen regarded him quietly, his craggy, aged face radiating kindness. It was a rare trait in Shinobi, one Hiruzen had taken great pains to master. To his left stood his best and oldest friend, Shimura Danzo, who certainly had never concerned himself with looking hind. His attention was out the window, his one eye on the rooftops far below, and he leaned heavily on a gnarled wooden cane. On the floor sat Nara Shikaku, a middle-aged man with spiky black hair and two distinctive scars across his face. Shikaku had been a renowned Jonin until a skirmish with one of Kirigakure's seven swordsmen had left him with no legs below mid-thigh. Now his prodigious mind served the Hokage – there were few in the five nations who could match his aptitude for strategy.

Finally Kakashi found Itachi's fourth and final advisor, a tall woman with tanned skin and deep brown hair. Unlike the other advisors, she was dressed for war – plates of lacquered wood, dyed a deep red, covered her upper body. She was Senju Keisai, the woman who would have been Hokage.

When Hiruzen had decided to pass his hat on for the second time, Senju Keisai had been at the top of a very short list. She was a ferocious warrior, a respected leader, and cunning tactician – the perfect Shinobi, especially considering she was heir to the Senju clan and the direct descendant of the First. With the support of both the Sixth and many of the noble clans, she had been Hokage in all but name until the night before the announcement was to be made public.

Kakashi had been out of the village when the whole thing had gone down, and he was not a man who traded in rumors. But there were a few people in the village he trusted, and they had all told him the same thing – that Uchiha Fugaku had called an emergency meeting of seven of the eight noble clans, all except the Senju. What happened behind those closed doors was known to none except the clan heads, but the next day it was Itachi who had knelt to accept the hat, not Keisai.

And then Itachi had named her advisor, leaving the council without a single Uchiha member. It was a great honor of course – the advisors were second only to the Hokage himself – but Kakashi could tell from her demeanor that Keisai still believed she should be the one in the robe and hat. Kakashi couldn't entirely blame her.

"Hatake Kakashi," Nara Shikaku said, from his place on the floor. "We did not anticipate your timeliness."

Kakashi dropped to one knee in a bow. "I can put aside eccentricities, when the need arises." Was it just a trick of the light, or could he see some crimson in the Hokage's eyes?

"Then we should get directly to the point," Shikaku said, which Kakashi took as his cue to stand. "Subaku Rasa is dead."

Kakashi recognized the name instantly. "The Tenth Kazekage." His mind flashed with memories before he could compose himself. The sun, baking him. Blood, like a streak of red across sandstone. "When did this happen?"

"Yesterday," Shikaku said from his seat on the floor. "Which means we must move quickly. The mourning has begun. We have reason to believe that two of his children are already dead."

Kakashi grimaced. Sunagakure, the village hidden in the sands, did not waste time. Konohagakure chose its leaders by agreement of the noble clans, a compromise designed to cement the alliance between Uchiha and Senju – each of whom could've ruled a village in their own right. The circumstances of Sunagakure's founding were substantially different. The Subaku clan had been the unquestioned power in the region, and the petty clans had flocked to their banner. Even 200 years later their descendants ruled the Land of Wind. The next Kazekage would be a child of the old – but which child?

For the Subaku were not content with primogeniture. Strength, cunning, ruthless ambition – these were the traits the Subaku valued in their leaders, and none of these were guaranteed by first birth. Instead the Kazekage took wives, often over a dozen, and spent his reign filling the sandstone palace with princes and princesses who, upon their fathers death, murdered each other for the right to wear his hat.

The whole process was much simpler when the Kazekage was a woman, and the number of her children limited by nature. Subaku Rasa had had over thirty children. The streets of Sunagakure would drown in royal blood before a new Kazekage cemented control – and likely for quite some time after as well. "What do you need me to do?" He asked. His skin buzzed with the anticipation that came before a mission, the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the knowledge he would soon face death.

"Our agents in the city have been in contact with one of the princesses," Shikaku explained. "Her interests align with ours. Seat her, or find the next best alternative."

"Which is?"

"Peace in the region," Keisai answered. She watched Kakashi with unblinking eyes, and when he turned his head to her he caught the slightest whiff of mint. "Every day brings new reports of religious violence in the demilitarized zones. Until someone," she shot a not-quite-treasonous look Itachi's direction, which the Hokage failed to either see or mind, "solves the Akatsuki problem, we need the desert placid and safe to ignore."

Akatsuki. A word from a tongue older than villages, perhaps older than clans. And there will be war, and pain, and death, and a light in the darkness. The nine will salt the earth, and the clouds will grow fat with blood, and the red moon will herald the dawn. The hairs on the back of Kakashi's neck prickled at merely the thought. He had never been particularly religious, but all Shinobi knew the final sentences of the Book of the Sage. But the advisors were staring at him, so he bowed his head and took shelter in tradition. "I am the empty vessel," he said. "I am the clay soldier in which the will of fire burns."

"That may be," Hiruzen said, "but you are not merely a nameless knife among dozens." He spoke slowly, turning over each word in his head before speaking it aloud. "The princess we speak of requested you specifically for this task."

Strange, but not entirely unexpected. Kakashi didn't have many friends in Sunagakure, but he might have enemies of his enemies. "Who is the lucky lady, exactly?"

"Subaku Temari," Keisei supplied.

Kakashi blinked. That name…

Meant nothing to him. He told the room as much.

Hiruzen frowned slightly at the admission. "A Shinobi of your caliber..." he said, in his slow, ponderous way, "to expect you to remain aware of all the scars you have left in this world would be a grueling task indeed. And yet, it seems as though this particular scar might stand out more to you, given its notoriety."

"She is the daughter of Reishi Yoshino," Keisai said, wearing a smile that was equal parts amusement and curiosity. "The Kazekage's ninth wife."

"Oh." Kakashi swallowed, suddenly feeling significantly less eager and significantly more sick to his stomach. He had assumed that the princess requesting him had been born of one of the Rasa's many other lovers. There was little love lost between the sister wives of the Kazekage, and it would not be unusual for a few of them to see him as a potential ally. Ally was not the word that came to mind when Kakashi thought of Yoshino's daughter – though he could think of a few very different reasons she might want him far from home and surrounded by hostile Shinobi.

"Apprehension is understandable," Shikaku said. "But Temari is an asset we've been evaluating for quite some time. She's sensible. Pragmatic."

"And a Shinobi," Kakashi said. "And a Sunagakure princess at that. Masks are more comfortable to her than her own face."

Shikaku inclined his head, conceding the point. "Then consider this," he said. "On any day of the year, Sunagakure is one of the most secure cities in the world. During the mourning, it is _the_ most secure city in the world. If you have another way to get Jonin inside, by all means." He gestured to the advisors. "Enlighten us."

"Don't get smart with the boy, Nara," Danzo murmured, his face finally turned away from the window. "You can't blame him for worrying that we're giving him to the fucking tans." He rapped his cane against the floor, drawing the attention of everyone in the room to where he stood – directly above the tangle of black lines that marked Sunagakure, sharp against the blue of the river Kahaki. "When last we sent you here, Shinobi Hatake – that was a death sentence. This is a vacation. We expect you to return, and return well-rested."

Keisai barked a laugh, though the rest of the room was silent.

Kakashi swallowed. "So if it is a trap?" He asked.

"Then you will do what you do so well," Danzo said, his voice iron.

Survive. Turn the trap upon his enemies. Parade their corpses through the streets. He was a man of so many different talents. Kakashi closed his eyes and for a moment. He could still feel the relentless heat on his skin. The strangled gasps from the windows. "I'll need a team," he said.

"You have your pick. Any Shinobi in the village," Shikaku said. "And a few out of the village as well. We can make arrangements for rendezvous as you travel."

For a moment, Kakashi was tempted. It wasn't often he had such broad authority in putting together a team, and there was no small number of Shinobi who sprang to mind. Yuhi Asuma was in the village, and his wife Kurenai as well, both competent and battle tested. And if ANBU were on the table – well, he'd been meaning to work with Uzuki Yugao again. The girl was nearly as good with a sword as his father had been.

But then he saw Guy sitting in the lobby, heard the conviction in his voice, and an unnerving certainty settled over him. "There's no need," he heard himself saying. "The team I want is firmly within the walls. Mitarashi Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, and," he inhaled, "Uchiha Sasuke."

All eyes moved to Itachi. The Hokage sat with one cheek rested against his knuckles, his eyes unreadable. He studied Kakashi for a moment, then in a soft, almost delicate voice, said, "out."

Kakashi stood, rooted to one spot, as the advisors filed out of the room to either side of him. Even Shikaku didn't miss a beat, walking through the sliding door on his hands. Within moments Kakashi and the Hokage were utterly alone. Not even the ANBU had remained. He waited for Itachi to speak, but the moments dragged on with nothing to fill them but silence.

Kakashi held out for nearly two minutes. "Hokage-sama," he said, dropping back to one knee. "Your brother-"

"Is approved to go with you," Itachi said, "if you can convince him. I would suggest not mentioning that the mission came from me."

Kakashi opened his mouth. Closed it again. "I do believe he's ready."

"As do I," Itachi replied. "He is not why we are speaking in private."

Rai's eyes, thick with suspicion. Kakashi took a deep breath. "Ah."

"Uzumaki Naruto," Itachi said. There was no anger in his voice – not even sternness. But there was an edge to it, the promise something harsh. "Explain yourself."

Kakashi had been expecting this meeting since the night he had suggested the name to Naruto, and yet despite half a dozen sleepless nights spent agonizing over defenses, he found himself curiously speechless. All the justifications he had practiced seemed thin and flimsy when staring up at Itachi – when staring up at the Eighth. "Ah," he said again, desperate for time. "You put me in charge of keeping him safe."

"And from here, it looks like you are doing anything but," Itachi said. "Did the boy offend you somehow? Do you want him dead?"

"Of course not. I think the double bluff-"

"Will draw the attention of the other villages," Itachi interrupted, smooth as silk. "How could it not?"

Kakashi ground his teeth, ever so slightly. "Their attention was already drawn," he said. "I'm not the one who let your bro-" He bit back the rest of his words and swallowed them, hard, casting his eyes away.

Itachi took a moment to consider Kakashi's words. "Speak freely," he said. "That is an order."

Kakashi rose, shoving his hands in his pockets. Withdrawing into his clothes, hiding behind mask and fatigues and armor. "What I meant, Hokage-sama, is that any hope of keeping Naruto out of sight died well before I got involved. You should've kept a closer eye on him. You should never have let Sasuke have him. I know he wasn't a candidate, but his children might've been, and now they're out of this office's reach."

"I wouldn't say out of our reach," Itachi said. "A stretch, perhaps. It's very likely that Naruto is a genetic dead end, but if he isn't..." His tone was far too casual to be suggesting what he was. "I take your point, though. If a double bluff is going to succeed, it's here. He has neither the hair nor the chakra." He drummed his fingers against his thigh, a slow and steady rhythm. His eyes were on Kakashi, but Itachi himself was elsewhere. "There's not much I wouldn't give, to know who his father was."

It was a futile wish, of course. Orochimaru had burned every record when he had fled the village. Even if anything had been recovered, it could never have been trusted. Orochimaru had run the village's breeding programs since nineteen.

Another long silence followed, but this one was broken by Itachi. "Obviously much of the blame can be put at my feet," he said, "and I suppose the authority granted to you was rather broad." And yet he did not look quiet convinced. What stirred in those endless black eyes was not comprehension, but curiosity. "Is that all you have to say in your defense?"

There was nothing to defend. A man ought to have a family. "No, Hokage-sama." Kakashi met Itachi's gaze and held it, fingers pulling down his mask so the Hokage could see his face. "I ask you to consider the utility of this situation. Naruto is now a lightning rod. Any Shinobi searching for our candidates will almost certainly go through him."

Itachi shifted, and suddenly his eyes were deep, unreadable. "I see," he said. "Gather your apprentices, Hatake Kakashi. You leave as soon as your escort arrives."

The horn came a moment later – a booming roar that crashed into Kakashi like a physical force. Itachi only smiled. "Well," he said, as soon as the noise had faded, "I suppose you leave today."

-OOO-

From the top of Konohagakure's walls, Naruto could see the world.

Normally, the world was green. Konohagakure took its name from the dense woodlands in which it was built, but the village's security necessitated that Shinobi kept a vast, cleared area around the village – to make it harder for enemy Shinobi to make their way to the walls undetected. Now nearly a mile of field separated the village from the forest around it. Beyond that was a dense canopy of trees that stretched to the horizon.

Today, however, the Inuzuka horde had come to town, and the land outside the walls burst with every color of the rainbow.

Over a dozen Shinobi had gathered atop the walls, congregating in small groups and talking excitedly amongst themselves. Naruto sat at the edge, feet dangling out over the abyss below. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and marveled at the sheer number of people that assembled in the shadow of the wall. Like other Shinobi clans, the Inuzuka had petty clans sworn to them, and civilians who followed in their wake, seeking protection and belonging. Unlike the other Shinobi clans however, the Inuzuka had never settled into the lives of stationary lords. Rather, they had kept to their pre-modern traditions, roaming from place to place – and those they ruled came with them. The Inuzuka horde was a city on the march, thousands of dirty, hard travelers who looked and sounded like nothing else in the Land of Fire.

"Come on, let's go already," Naruto said, leaning over the edge of the wall. His skin prickled with energy, with the desire to slide down the wall and join the massive throng of people. Already they were setting up their tents, colorful swathes of silk and wool and more exotic cloths. Within were trinkets and baubles from all across the elemental nations, a menagerie of treasures. It had been years since the horde had last come to Konohagakure, but already Naruto was remembering their last visit – the sights and sounds and smells and tastes that the horde brought with them, unlike anything Naruto had ever experienced before.

"We can't go yet," Sakura said, ever patient. She stood above him, her long braid swaying in the breeze. "Lord Aburame has to greet the Inuzuka first. It's tradition." The Inuzuka were nearly as large and powerful as any of Konohagakure's noble clans, but their way of life made them ill-suited to governance. They maintained a friendly relationship with the Aburame, technically sworn to them, but largely free to do as they wished. "There!" Sakura said suddenly, pointing to the ground below.

Naruto followed her finger, but the figures to which she gestured were so far away that they were little more than smudges in his vision. He sucked in a breath and channeled chakra to his eyes, ignoring the way they stung as his vision sharpened. For a moment his sight was magnified too much, and the rush of sensation made his head pound, forcing him to ease the flow to a trickle. Enhancing the senses was a delicate bit of chakra manipulation, more Sakura's wheelhouse than his own, but after a moment his vision settled and he was able to see the men and women Sakura had pointed out.

Lord Aburame, flanked by several Shinobi, was covered head to toe in robes and bandages that left not an inch of skin exposed. He held in his hands a sheathed sword, which he presented to the woman facing him with a respectful inclination of his head.

Said woman was small, maybe around Naruto's height, but every inch of her was wiry muscle. Her hair, a brown so deep it was almost black, was bushy and wild and fell past her shoulders. She wore only loose pants and a bolt of silk wrapped around her breasts, so that nothing covered her tattoos.

All the Inuzuka had tattoos, but this one had more than most. Bold lines of red and black and blue and yellow, skulls and fires and towers imprinted on her deeply tanned skin. It was said that the Inuzuka wore the story of their lives upon their skin, for any man bold enough to read, but all Naruto knew of the practice was that it was deeply enmeshed in history and symbolism that he only partially understood.

"That's Inuzuka Tsume." The words came from Sasuke, who sat cross legged next to Naruto. His face was pensive. "She killed the last Chieftain in ten seconds. They say it's the shortest duel for the title in Inuzuka history." He paused for a moment, then said, "I hear she's got a daughter."

Naruto laughed. "Sounds like there are less risky prospects out there."

"Did I give you the impression I was timid?" Sasuke asked, and when Naruto looked over he could've sworn he saw the shadow of a smile on the Uchiha Prince's face.

Naruto laughed again. "I'm trying to picture the look on everyone's face when you come back with an Inuzuka princess in tow."

"I'd be more worried about the faces of the Inuzuka when I asked," Sasuke said. "They don't often marry outside the horde." He made a face. "Wait, no. I'd be more worried about my father's face when he learned I'd sworn myself to a savage."

"They're not savages," Naruto protested, "they're our allies. Part of Konohagakure."

"I'm not the one you have to convince," Sasuke said. "I visited the horde the last time they came to the village. It was...overwhelming. Bursting at the seams. Whatever the Inuzuka are, they're not savages."

"Ah, I went too!" Naruto said, beaming. "Did you buy anything? I bought a helmet they took off a Stone Shinobi, and I won a plant from the Land of Water in a bet." He scowled. "It died though. It needed more water than I did."

Wordlessly, Sasuke unbuttoned his flak jacket and shrugged it to the ground. He pulled down the collar of his fatigues to expose three tomoes surrounding a circle on his shoulder – a minimalist sharingan eye, black ink on ivory skin.

Naruto gaped. "You got a _tattoo_?" Even Sakura was staring, their conversation pulling her from her observation of the Inuzuka Chieftain.

"It was Shisui's idea," Sasuke said, redressing himself. "It was my first time seeing the Inuzuka and being old enough to really understand. I made a comment about the tattoos. They're...very striking. Next thing I know I was half a bottle of sake deep and getting stabbed with needles in a tent that smelled like dog." He shook his head. "It was the only time in my life I've ever seen my mother that angry...I really thought she'd kill Shisui. My father was back in Uchiha lands, so he didn't learn for months, but Itachi…" he trailed off into an uneasy silence, then returned his attention to the horde below. A scowl darkened his features, making them seem imperious and cruel.

Naruto sat, the three of them an island of quiet within a sea of background noise. The conversations of the other Shinobi, the general clamor of the horde before them and the village behind – they rose and fell like waves, but did not touch the apprentices of Hatake Kakashi. Such was the way of things, when the Eighth was mentioned.

It was Sakura who first dared to speak. "It...well, you know, it's actually kind of of strange," she stammered, her eyes still locked on Lord Aburame and the Inuzuka Chieftain. "The Inuzuka were, well, the horde as a whole I suppose, they were last here, what, three years back? Normally they're gone for much longer stretches."

Sasuke glanced over at her. "That's true," he said. The words were slow, careful, as if he were double or triple checking for a reference to Itachi that might be hidden within. "Last I heard they were out east, tangling with some Sunagakure desert savages." His eyes narrowed. "And they're getting a _lot_ of gifts. I wonder if they got called back?"

Naruto took another look, and sure enough the gifts were piling up behind the Inuzuka Chieftain – the sword Naruto had seen earlier, alongside several other fine weapons. Rugs spun by Aburame silkworms. A wooden cart that looked to be grown from Senju redwood. An orb of glass that broke the sunlight into a dozen fractal rainbows. "The horde's not a dog," he said, then chuckled at his own joke. "I mean, it doesn't come when called."

"Depends on who's doing the calling, doesn't it?" Sakura asked, arching an eyebrow.

"It's worth investigating," Sasuke said. Sakura flushed at his words.

It was at that moment that Lord Aburame stepped away from the Inuzuka Chieftain and raised his arms high above his head. The Shinobi around them – there were at least fifty now that Naruto could see, and still more clambering up the side of the wall to join them – burst into an excited buzzing as the Aburame brought his hands down.

"That's the signal," Sasuke said. "Let's-"

Naruto whooped and pushed himself off the edge of the wall, spreading his arms as his stomach gave a sudden, terrifying lurch. A moment later he was in free fall – or would've been, had his feet not stayed tethered to the wall with a quick application of chakra. Naruto limited the flow, and the magnetic connection weakened until it was no longer powerful enough to defy gravity – but it was enough to slow his fall, sending him sliding gracefully down the wall instead of plummeting to his death.

A laugh bubbled up in Naruto's chest as the wind rushed through his hair, sending it whipping every which way. He leaned forward and fell into a tumble, somersaulting down the sheer surface before twisting and grabbing onto the wall with both hands and feet to better control his descent. Above him, Sakura, who was herself descending much more sensibly, shouted something that was torn away by the wind. Naruto was about to respond with his own shout when a blue shape blurred past him at such speed that the only image he was able to gleam from it was Sasuke's smirking face.

Naruto laughed again and lessened the resistance, gaining speed to match Sasuke. The two of them were more falling than sliding now, only barely skimming hands and feet against the wall. The ground rose to meet them, faster and faster – but as Sasuke showed no sign of slowing, neither did Naruto.

Finally, with only ten feet left between them and a sudden, violent reunion with the ground, Sasuke abruptly slowed. Naruto felt a surge of triumph and rushed to channel chakra to his hands and feet, but his control was not as flawless as Sasuke's, and he slowed only partially.

There was a sudden thud, an explosion of light and color and pain. Naruto's jaw slammed shut, his teeth and bones vibrating from the impact, he was tumbling end over end, bleeding excess momentum across the grass. Then, as suddenly as it had started Naruto was staring up at the sky, which spun violently around him.

"Naruto!" Sakura's voice was more like the wail of a dying animal than that of young woman, and then the spinning sky was replaced by her face, which also spun but looked far more concerned about it. "Are you hurt?" She asked, pressing fingers into his legs. "Can you feel this?"

"Ow, shit, yeah," Naruto groaned, pushing himself into a sitting position. "Sage, Sakura, you're the only thing hurting me right now."

Sakura scowled at him. "I can't believe you," she said, shoving him back down to the grass – not gently, but not so violently as she could have. "You're going to get yourself killed someday."

"Yeah, but I'm gonna die a winner," Naruto said, craning his neck until he caught a glimpse of Sasuke. "You hear that, Sasuke- _sama_? How's defeat taste? Like expired milk, I bet."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and bent down to pick Naruto up, hooking his own arms under the blond's armpits. "Somehow I think I came out ahead of this one," he said, patting Naruto on the back. "Sakura-chan's going to be badgering you about that all day, you know."

"So it's like every day of my life?" Naruto asked, then lifted his arms in a vain attempt to ward off Sakura's grabbing of his ear. "I take it back! I take it back!"

It was only then his faculties returned enough to see the horde. A tent city stretched out before him, thousands of people and animals crammed in as small a space as could conceivably fit them – and then crammed in a little tighter, just for good measure. Music, song, shouts, the clash of steel against steel, arguments, haggling, wailing, conversations in a dozen different languages, the braying of horses, the roars and barks and snarls and howls of hounds. Roasting meat, sweat, shit, perfume, spices, oil, ash, blood, the musk of hound.

And they were everywhere, the dogs that gave the Inuzuka their name. Packs of puppies darted through the feet of the men and women of the horde. Dogs whose heads came up to Naruto's chest bounded this way and that, sometimes bearing goods on their back with use of a specialized saddle. Still more stretched taller than Naruto himself, the size of horses – veritable mountains of muscle and fur, their coats painted in rough imitation of the Inuzuka tattoos. War dogs, the pinnacle of a thousand years of aggressive breeding.

"You would think they'd be smaller than I remembered," Sakura said, placing herself ever so slightly behind Naruto and peering warily over his shoulder. "Since I was so much smaller when I last saw them...but I think they're bigger than ever. Amaterasu protect me." She spat the last words in a harsh whisper.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Naruto said, taking her hand. "Seriously, don't, because they're between us and the meat, and the meat is non-negotiable."

"Look at that crowd," Sasuke said, pointing at a gap in the press of tents. Sure enough, a large mass of bodies had gathered, their density noticeable even in the confines of the horde. They were faced away from the village, pushing and jostling, smaller bodies seated on the shoulders of larger ones to get a better view of whatever was attracting them. They were close enough to be heard, but not so close that Naruto could make out anything other than a dull roar amongst the din.

"Come on," Sasuke said, setting out towards the crowd.

"But the dogs," Sakura said.

"But the meat!" Naruto said.

Sasuke's eyes settled on them, his face the Lord's mask – distant, aloof, unconcerned with the opinions of the chattering sheep. "I'm pulling rank," he said. "Now come on, before we miss it."

Naruto rolled his eyes but followed, making sure to keep himself between Sakura and the nearest war dog. It was impossible to walk through the horde unmolested, and every step found him bumping or brushing against a new body. Within moments he was sweating – in the thick of the horde, a cool spring afternoon became a sweltering summer day. Sasuke moved through the ocean of flesh like a leaf in the wind, turning and sidestepping with an effortless grace. Naruto merely lowered his head and plowed forwards, while Sakura kept up a steady stream of apologies in his wake.

Finally they reached the crowd, a wall of bodies with their backs turned. Sasuke tried to knife his way through the mob, turning sideways and trying to squeeze through a gap, but it closed as quickly as it had opened. After a few moments of fruitless squeezing Naruto tapped Sasuke on the shoulder to get his attention. As the Uchiha turned, Naruto pressed his hands together and summoned three shadow clones in a puff of smoke.

As it turned out, even atop the clones' shoulders it was impossible to see over the crowd, and Naruto was forced to make another three clones to get the necessary height. Maintaining six clones at once was a strenuous affair, and stacked three people high they wavered and wobbled and threatened to collapse with every slight gust of wind, but at least they could see what all the fuss was about.

The crowd had gathered in the shape of a long, thin oval. At each end of the oval stood a man and a war dog. One man was tall, with a mane of red hair. He wore armored pants and no shirt, to present his many tattoos to the world, and he clutched a curved sword in one hand. His war dog was tall and thin, its paint swirls of green and blue.

The other man was shorter, his brown hair cut short as well. The tattoos upon his chest were less numerous than his opponents, but he bore two red fangs on his cheeks. His war dog was shorter, stockier than the other, its white fur broken by brutal streaks of red. Both dogs wore saddles upon their backs, supple leather worn from hard riding.

The two men took several minutes to prepare for battle. Men and women crowded around them, rubbing them down with oil, checking the straps on their saddles. Finally someone in the middle blew a horn, and the two vaulted up onto their hounds amidst a frenzied cheer from the crowd.

"They're fighting?" Naruto asked, shouting to be heard above the din. "About what?"

"Who knows?" Sasuke asked. "The Inuzuka will fight over anything. There's a reason we call them savages."

The roaring crowd, the fighters getting prepared to tear into each other – it certainly wasn't a civilized affair, Naruto supposed. And yet as the men spurred their dogs into violent, loping movement, he found himself unable to look away. The dogs were faster than a Shinobi, even at a dead sprint, and their long strides ate up the ground between them in a flash. Had Naruto not gotten used to following such speed, from long hours sparring with Kakashi, he would not even have been able to follow their movement. As it was, they were blurs of white and red and black and blue. The two riders stood in the stirrups, their bodies pressed flat against the backs of the mounts.

Just before the dogs crashed together in a tangle of fang and claw and fur, the riders leapt from their saddles. They collided in midair, the red haired one's sword flashing in the afternoon light. The crowd gave a single, furious roar as the combatants fell to the dirt, the red haired one on top, his opponent beneath him. The dogs fell to the ground in the other direction, snarling and clawing at each other in a frenzy of raw, animal violence. First the red-marked one was on top, then the blue-marked one displaced him, over and over and over again.

Their masters were engaged in their own struggle, the red haired boy raising his blade high into the air – but then the brown haired one shoved his palm forward, his lips locked in a wordless snarl. The air around his hand rippled and exploded forwards, catching his opponent head on, and red blood erupted from the sword-wielder's skin. He screamed, a high agonized shriek, stumbling backwards, his skin rent by a series of long, horizontal cuts that spanned from shoulder to mid thigh. Then he toppled backwards and hit the dirt hard, his sword skittering across the ground like a demented insect.

Naruto had thought the crowd wild before but now it truly thundered, a force of nature more than a collection of people. They leapt up and down, screamed and roared and hollered, jostling each other back and forth.

The brown haired boy, victorious, leapt to his feet. The dogs had disentangled, the skinny blue-marked one retreating to nudge at his master, who groaned and writhed along the ground – hurting, but not dead. There was a lot of blood, but Naruto didn't think the wounds were enough to kill him. Even as he screamed, a handful of the men and women who had prepared him for battle darted forward out of the crowd, dragging him away.

The crowd did not care. It had eyes only for the victor, who stopped rubbing his war dog's head to pound his fists against his own chest. "I am Inuzuka Kiba!" He bellowed, throwing his head back as if his voice carried recoil. "All who have challenged me are blooded!" He swept his arm across the oval clearing, to demonstrate the failure of his opponent. "I will travel east, across the sands! I will ride to the walls of Sunagakure and piss on the jewel of the desert!"

Adulation poured from the crowd, which surged forward to embrace their champion. Kiba stood, his arms spread wide, as they crashed against him. Naruto gasped as the crowd that had gathered behind him slammed into his shadow clones, and in a burst of smoke he, Sakura, and Sasuke tumbled to the grass.

Naruto landed hard for the second time in ten minutes, staring up at the sky. Sasuke landed beside him on all fours, like some kind of cat, whereas Sakura split the difference and fell into a roll to mitigate the fall. "Now can we eat meat?" Naruto shouted, so that his friends could hear him.

To his surprise it was neither Sasuke's nor Sakura's voice the answered – neither Sasuke's nor Sakura's face that appeared in his field of vision. "Oh good," Kakashi said, smiling in the way he did, with his eyes rather than his perpetually hidden mouth. "I see you've met our tour guide."


	6. The Desert

**Born Weapons  
** **Arc II  
** **I Am A Monster  
** **Chapter VI  
** **The Desert**

“If there is meaning in death, I have yet to find it.”  
\- Momoichi Zabuza  
Thirteenth Mizukage

As Prince of the Uchiha, he who would be Lord one day in his own right, direct descendant of the Sage of Six Paths and a Jonin of Konohagakure, one of the five great powers of this world, Uchiha Sasuke did not complain. If he did, however, he would’ve saved his complaints for here, and now, and unleashed them like the flood that peasants in the Land of Water claimed had once swept over this world (and would return again, in time).

No sooner had Kakashi shown his face at the Horde’s market than they had been ordered back into the village, to pack for months of travel. A mission. Sasuke’s heart had soared at the thought, at the chance to finally prove himself worthy of the Jonin title his birth had won for him. Anticipation had rattled his bones in the scant hours they spent preparing for their mission into the Land of Wind, and he had hardly slept the first night, or the second. His nighttime hours had been filled with the sight of the starry sky, and with thoughts of the glory that awaited him in Sunagakure.

But then the days had turned to weeks, and Sasuke’s enthusiasm had faded. Each day they urged their horses across a landscape that grew sparser and dryer by the mile, until finally they reached the banks of the mighty river Kahaki.

“This is where our journey begins in earnest,” Kiba had said, and Sasuke had shuddered at the thought.

The river Kahaki was a torrent of blue and green, six miles across at its widest – so vast that even with chakra enhancing one’s vision, it was impossible to see the other shore. The curvature of the earth hid it from even the sharpest eyes.

“There isn’t a bigger river in the world,” Sakura had gushed, when they had ridden aside one another for the entirety of an afternoon. “The Noho, in Water, it’s wider, especially during the wet season. But in terms of pure gallons…”

And Sasuke had nodded, and asked questions. There was little else to do, in the endless hours as they rode – save watch for other travelers. It was best to remain unnoticed, Kakashi had told them, but that was not a particularly easy thing to do. To wander too far from the river Kahaki meant death, which meant that all traffic in the Land of Wind gathered along its banks. Even as they ranged further and further out, they could not keep from crossing paths with travelers. Their frequency had forced Kiba to abandon his hound, letting the beast roam far and free while the Inuzuka rode a bartered for horse alongside the rest of them.

Kiba, it seemed, had none of Sasuke’s compunctions against complaints. “This isn’t the mount of a warrior!” He had shouted at Kakashi as they rode. “I’m a man of the Inuzuka!” But Kakashi had fixed the boy with a cold, silent stare, and eventually Kiba had relented.

Still, the hound was with them, always. Sasuke sometimes caught sight of it, padding across the golden dunes as they rode ever northward.

“How’s he gonna eat?” Naruto had asked. Of the four non-Inuzuka, he had been the only one to truly befriend the hound.

Kiba has only smiled and assured them that the dog could take care of itself. A day later, they had come across the freshly mangled corpse of a hippopotamus.

“Been a long time since I’ve eaten hippo,” Kakashi said as they tore into their meal. More hippo crackled over the fire, and smoke drifted lazily up into the night sky, filling Sasuke’s nose with the smell of cooking meat.

Sakura poked at her hippo hesitantly. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Naruto made a garbled noise of assent through his mouthful.

Sasuke tried to eat his own portion with a little more dignity than the blond. The meat could hardly measure up to the feasts he had enjoyed back in the Uchiha compound, but after weeks of nothing but trail rations he was just thankful to have something that hadn’t been engineered in a lab.

They had stopped for the night within sight of the river Kahaki, which at this point in its journey crawled sluggishly through the desert rather than racing as it had closer to the ocean. An outcropping of large rocks shielded them from biting nighttime wind.

Kiba, finishing off his dinner, let loose a prodigious burp and flopped back onto the sand. “Reckon we’re close,” he said, over the crackle of the fire. “Two days, maybe three?”

Sasuke blinked, processing the words. He had begun to think this traveling would never end – and as he mapped their journey in his head, realizing that Kiba was likely correct, the anticipation crept back in at the edges of his thoughts.

“Hm.” Kakashi squinted up at the sky, taking long moments to study the stars. “We haven’t seen any Nosuri this whole trip.”

“They don’t usually come this far west,” Kiba said. “Maybe it was different during the war, but they spend most of their time on the border, raiding.”

Kakashi shook his head. “During normal times, maybe. For a mourning, they’ll come to the city. They might not be heavily involved in politics, but they have interests that will need seeing to.”

“I can call Akamaru back, do some scouting,” Kiba suggested.

Kakashi considered it for a moment, then nodded. “We’re close enough that stealth is no longer our main concern. Better to know what’s around us.”

“I don’t know much about the Nosuri,” Sakura said. “Have either of you fought them before?” She gave a small smile when Sasuke looked over, but he could see the hand that gripped her plate shaking just a bit. He was not the only one feeling the imminence of their destination, it seemed – and while Sasuke sought peace by imagining glory, Sakura looked for it in knowledge of her enemy.

“Don’t look at me,” Kakashi said. “I didn’t join the war effort until we had already pushed into Sunagakure. The Nosuri were harrying our lines, but they were mostly out of the fight at that point.” He lifted a tin cup to his lips and took a long sip. “Care to weigh in, Inuzuka-san?”

Sasuke tried not to let his eye twitch. Kakashi had yet to refer to _him_ so politely.

“We’ve tangled once or twice,” Kiba said, pushing himself back up into a sitting position. His hair had grown long and unkempt since they began their journey, and it stirred lightly in the desert breeze. “Hard to avoid them, if you’re out on the fringes of the desert. Bastards are always spoiling for a fight.”

“It’s part of their culture,” Sakura said, quiet. “They’re not men until they survive their first battle.” Apparently, to Sakura, not knowing much about something meant that she only knew one or two textbooks worth.

“They ain’t ever men,” Kiba said, and the look in his eyes practically feral. He spat a string of words in a language Sasuke didn’t understand, an ancient nomadic pidgin rarely spoken in civilized lands. “Demons would be a better word.”

Sakura shook her head. “They’re just people.”

“People have honor,” Kiba shot back. “Respect for the dead. They don’t carve out the hearts of the people they kill.”

“No way,” Naruto said, his meal suddenly forgotten. “For serious?”

The firelight danced across Kiba’s face – one moment it was illuminated in deep reds and yellows, the next it was cloaked in darkness. “Seen it with my own eyes,” he said. “They like the Inuzuka hearts most of all.”

“I’ve heard of this,” Sasuke said. “Your clan and theirs...there’s history there.”

“History,” Kiba shrugged. “Sounds too tame. There’s blood between us, enough to drown in.”

“Well you can’t leave us hanging,” Naruto said. He was leaning forward, a smile stretched across his face. “It’s about your turn to tell a story anyway.”

Naruto was hardly the only one eager to hear. Sakura had scooted in closer, and even Sasuke found himself hanging on Kiba’s silence. Kiba glanced over at Kakashi, but the man was still looking idly up the stars. So the Inuzuka turned back to them, brushing long, dirty strands of hair away from his face. In the firelight, the fang tattoos on his cheeks seemed more blood than ink.

“I ain’t a teller,” he began, his voice hesitant, “so I can only say what I was told, how I was told it. Well, thousands of years ago, the Inuzuka rode the plains that border what’s the Land of Wind, now. We were mighty, but not as mighty as we are now. There were those who could challenge us...and then one spring there was a plague that bloodied us something fierce. We were a shell. It looked like we might not make it at all.

“And then the Baku clan came in from the north, from the mountains that are part of the Land of Earth now. The Baku ain’t much to fear now, not after their bloodline got all reduced to sealing-” Kiba’s finger traced the familiar seals of an explosive tag in the air, almost unconsciously, “but this was long before then, when they were a force in the world. So the clans of the region called a meeting, and the Inuzuka went. Now back in those days the Nosuri were at the height of their power. They had a little empire of sorts, a whole bunch of land that they terrorized at will, from the mountains up north all the way to the sea. Rivaled only by the Subaku, they-”

“And the Uchiha,” Sasuke cut in.

Kiba glowered at him. “Oh, neh?”

“Neh,” Sasuke said. “If this is set when you say it is, the Uchiha would be somewhere between the mountains and sea.” He looked to Sakura, who shrugged.

“The records aren’t really conclusive…” she said, eyes flickering between Sasuke and Kiba. “The Uchiha were moving a lot at this point too...all we know is that they didn’t go east, into what’s now the Land of Fire.”

Naruto groaned. “Who cares? Are the Uchiha in the story?”

“They ain’t,” Kiba said.

Sasuke shrugged. “Keep talking, then.”

“Like I was saying…” Kiba cleared his throat. “The Nosuri ruled a whole bunch of land. They weren’t worried about the Baku, but everyone else was. So the Nosuri said fine, we’ll protect you, if you prove fealty. All the petty kings of the desert, lords of their clans, came forward and honored the Nosuri with gifts and treasures. Flattered them outrageous-like. Until only the Inuzuka were left.

“And like I said, the Inuzuka were weak just then. And poor too. They didn’t have anything to give. But our Chieftain at the time was a young girl. Mokone. Beautiful. She goes right up to the Nosuri king and says that she ain’t got anything to give him, so she’ll give him the only thing she’s got. Her heart.”

“Holy shit!” Naruto said from around another piece of hippo. “She cut her own heart out?”

Kiba looked at the blond like he couldn’t understand what was going through Naruto’s head. “It was a metaphor,” he said slowly. “A figure of speech, you know? She was saying she’d marry him.”

“Well then when the hell are we getting to the heart cutting out?”

“In a minute, for fuck’s sake,” Kiba said, shaking his head. “Look, so the Nosuri king was already married. But he was so taken by Mokone that he killed his wife right then and there. And he said after he crushed the Baku he’d marry her. So us and the Nosuri and all the other clans gathered together and met the Baku in the field, and beat them back.”

“And then?” Naruto asked.

Kiba grinned. “The corpses on the field were still warm when the Nosuri king sent his son to collect Mokone. But the second he got close, she broke his legs and fed him to her hound.”

Sakura made a small, distressed sound and put her hand to her mouth.

“The king came then,” Kiba continued, “spitting mad, killing anyone who looked at him funny. He demanded that Mokone give her heart to him, but she refused. Told the rest of the clan that to be vassals of the Nosuri would just be another kind of death – not the glorious death of battle but the slow death of a people, as their culture and identity is torn from them piece by piece. So they would spit in the eye of the Nosuri, and flee the desert.

“That didn’t make the king any happier, you can probably guess. He said that if Mokone wouldn’t give her heart freely he would take it from her, along with the hearts of all those who rightly belonged to him. Then for three years he chased them, all across the desert. Until finally Mokone led the Inuzuka into the east, where the Senju had grown their great forest. Nosuri skippers couldn’t follow us through the trees, so we escaped and survived.” He shrugged. “But we didn’t return to the desert for generations...and when we finally did, the Nosuri were still there. Waiting for us.”

For long minutes there was no sound except the fire and the gentle, rhythmic snores coming from Kakashi. Sasuke glanced over and saw that the man’s eyes were still open. Sasuke wasn’t entirely sure if the Jonin was fucking with them or not.

As he silence continued to stretch, however, Sasuke shifted in his seat. “Mokone should not have done that.”

“How could you say that?” Sakura asked, her tone almost – but not quite – accusatory. “Being forced into a marriage like that, it isn’t…” she trailed off, color rising in her cheeks. “The – the Nosuri king had already killed one wife. He was...a monster.”

Sasuke chose to ignore the implication behind her words. There was no point in widening any rift between them, not when they were so far from home. “She was Lord of her clan, and she gave her word,” he said. “Made a promise to another, and broke that promise even after they upheld their end of the bargain.” He glanced over at Kiba. “It’s no way to rule.”

Kiba met his gaze with cool disinterest. “She ain’t here to take offense,” he said, “And I sure as shit don’t need your approval.”

-ooo-

Naruto stood in his stirrups, more to stretch his legs than anything else. The desert spilled out around him in every direction, seemingly endless – they had been forced to veer away from the river Kahaki that morning by a procession of travelers. Stealth, while no longer their first priority, was still a concern. Kakashi clearly seemed to believe that they wouldn’t be safe until they reached the walls of Sunagakure and could count on the protection of this Subaku Temari.

His horse, an undersized roan with enough attitude to remind Naruto of himself, whipped its head back and forth. Naruto ran a hand along its neck to steady it. It had proved a sure-footed mount, even as the sand beneath them had become more and more treacherous, and now it plowed gamely up the side of a large dune. Behind him, Sakura a let loose a steady string of curses as her horse veered off course for what must’ve been the tenth time in the last hour, throwing off her billowing hood to make sure they didn’t accidentally fall off the side of the dune. She had been slow to adapt to both the horse and the expansive desert robes – and with their journey coming to a close, it was looking more and more like she would never master either.

Kakashi and Sasuke of course, were far more comfortable on their mounts. Kakashi had plenty of experience traveling to far-flung land, and Sasuke’s education as a Prince wouldn’t have been complete without learning to ride – though Naruto couldn’t shake the feeling that the Uchiha particularly enjoyed it. He was too much of a control freak to entirely trust his horse.

When he reached the top of the dune Naruto could see even further than before, and he took a moment to drink in the landscape. He would’ve thought that endless sameness of the desert would’ve bored him after a while, but somehow he never tired of the sight of sand rising and falling like waves on a vast, frozen ocean. He sharpened his vision to see more, see further.

It was then that Naruto saw of Kiba, a small spot on the horizon.

The Inuzuka had called his hound, Akamaru back just that morning, and team Kakashi had seen neither hide nor hair of him since as he ranged out to ensure their path was clear. Now he raced towards them, Akamaru kicking up a rippling cloud of golden sand in his wake. Naruto drew his horse to a halt and shouted, a wordless cry for attention, pointing.

A moment later a plume of red smoke rocketed from Akamaru’s back, high into the sky. Adrenaline raced through Naruto’s skin, shaking his bones.

It was Kakashi who spoke first. “Nosuri!” He shouted, taking a tighter rein with his horse. He grabbed a fistful of his desert cloak and yanked it free, tossing it aside. His fatigues, and armored jacket lay waiting beneath. Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto mimicked the motion just moments later, Sakura grunting in relief.

It was then they saw the pursuers. Akamaru was a blur as he dashed across the desert towards them, but the two shapes that crested the top of the dune truly _flew_. Wooden skiffs, longer than they were wide but large enough to hold a dozen men, with two crescent runners extending from the bottom. Large sails, pulled taught by an unnatural wind, pulled them across the sands so fast that they barely seemed to touch the ground, only occasionally returning to earth in an arrhythmic skip, skip, skip.

Nosuri skippers. Despite the fact that they were loaded with people coming to murder him and his friends, Naruto couldn’t stop his breath from hitching at the sheer, suicidal beauty of the crafts. Once, so long ago that the exact date had been lost to time, someone had built the first skipper and declared that they would ride the desert like the sea.

If you couldn’t admire someone with balls that big and brass, what could you admire?

Kakashi kicked his horse into gear, and the his students followed him. Naruto whooped as the wind streamed through his hair, and his screams and those of his horse made a strange almost melody as they half ran, half tumbled down the side of the dune.

Kiba met them at the bottom, Akamaru pacing in angry circles. The horses shied away from the beast, but their fear wasn’t as pronounced as it had been when they had first set out. Akamaru was fearsome, but kept the peace around the other animals.

“Is that all of them?” Kakashi shouted, pointing to the two Nosuri skippers. They were drawing closer with each passing second, gobbling up the distance with extended, languid leaps.

“Should be,” Kiba said, his voice hoarse. “They don’t normally come in threes.”

“How do you want to handle this?”

Naruto frowned, surprised to hear Kakashi deferring command. He had been waiting for an opportunity to see the Jonin in action since that first day, when he had effortlessly smacked the three of them around, but when the knife finally met the grindstone he seemed more than happy to follow Kiba’s lead.

Well, of the five of them Kiba was the only one who had fought Nosuri before. Still, by the look on the Inuzuka’s face he didn’t like their odds. “Would prefer even numbers,” he said. “Each skipper will hold five to eight.”

Kakashi squinted into the distance. “Five on one, seven on the other. Can the four of you handle five?”

“I…” Kiba stared at him. “It usually takes three of our men to handle a skipper. At least.”

“Ah well,” Kakashi said, stretching his neck side to side. “Excuse me if I don’t tie a hand behind my back, to even things up.”

“Have it your way,” Kiba said, shaking his head. “Won’t enjoy picking your bones from the sand.”

Kakashi waggled his eyebrows and saluted before putting spurs to his horse, sending it galloping off towards the skipper closing in from the right. “Come on then!” Kiba shouted at them. Akamaru moved without a signal that Naruto could see, and he struggled to get his horse to follow suit.

The four of them fell into a ragged line, charging straight for the Nosuri skipper. Kiba shouted something, and Naruto forced chakra to his ears to avoid the instructions being snatched away by the wind.

“They’re too fast to board right now!” the Inuzuka shouted. “We’ll have to slow them, try and jump aboard!”

“Fortifications?” Sasuke asked. Even shouting he managed to sound quiet and reserved. “I have earth techniques!”

Kiba shook his head. “Sand won’t hold them without practice! If you have any ranged techniques, try to hit the one working the sail or the levers! Otherwise, drive them towards me!” He reached down to run a hand through Akamaru’s fur. “Akamaru can match their speed in short bursts! They’ll know that, try to keep distance!”

Sure enough, as they drew in close the skipper began to bank away from them, maintaining separation. Naruto could see five Nosuri aboard.

They were wrapped in long strips of cloth that shielded them from the desert sun, only their eyes exposed. Dressed so, it would’ve been nearly impossible to tell them apart had they not worn colorful scarves around their necks. Two stood on an elevated deck towards the back of the skipper, with the one bearing a yellow scarf manipulating a mess of levers that were lashed to the sail with a complex knot of ropes. By adjusting the levers in turn, he changed the angle of the sail just enough to alter the trajectory of the craft.

If the yellow Nosuri at the levers provided the direction, then the one at the sail – with a blue scarf, Naruto noted – provided the thrust. He wove hand seals and then thrust both hands forward, filling the sail with a burst of wind that propelled the skipper into another leap.

The other three Nosuri, Red, Green, and Orange, hung from the side of the skipper, held in place both with liberal applications of chakra to their feet and with a heavy rope knotted around their waists. Green, who was on the edge closest to the Konohagakure Shinobi, punched out towards them, and a straight line of sand rose as if pulled upwards by a wind.

Naruto shouted and yanked his horse to the side, barely evading the oncoming attack. Sasuke was not so lucky. The Uchiha prince grimaced as sand struck his horse, the beast’s chest and stomach exploding into a fine red mist.

“Sasuke!” Sakura’s wail was thick with shock and fear, but the Uchiha was too stubborn – or perhaps too talented – to die in such a way. He threw himself from his saddle, hitting the sand and falling into a roll that kicked up clouds of golden sand.

“Give him your horse!” Kiba shouted, realizing at the same moment Naruto did that a dismounted Sasuke was useless to them. Sakura wasn’t a fighter...but didn’t that mean she was more vulnerable on the ground?

She didn’t hesitate though, wheeling her horse towards where Sasuke was trudging through the sand. “Uzumaki!” Kiba roared, and suddenly Naruto’s attention snapped back to the skipper, which was following up with another attack. Naruto guided his horse out of the way, keeping a close eye on the three Nosuri that were free to attack them. If he just watched them, he would have enough time to react to their techniques.

“Press in from that side!” Kiba shouted, pointing the way, and Naruto obeyed instantly. Every cell of him hummed with fire and music, burning away conscious thought and leaving only a single, ferocious instinct. His horse snorted as he gave it spurs, increasing it’s speed, and Naruto’s legs gripped the animal’s side with reckless abandon as the ground blurred beneath him.

Faced with a pincer, the skipper opted to angle away from Kiba – towards Naruto. Naruto banked his horse left, so that the front of the craft didn’t block his view of the attacking the Nosuri, and fished a throwing knife from the holster strapped to his leg. They approached each other parallel, him on his horse and the Nosuri on their skipper, and only when they close enough did they exchange fire, like great ships in some naval battle. The blast of sand from the skipper whiffed harmlessly in front of him, but Naruto’s knife fared little better, whizzing over the head of Orange and burying itself in the wooden mast. He was treated to only a split second of it quivering in place before the skipper sped away.

Sage, how was he supposed to drive that thing anywhere, let alone towards Kiba? It was so fast, and he had little in his arsenal that could meaningfully impact a craft of that size. Maybe a fire clone’s explosion could do some damage...but with how the wood of the skipper was withstanding the strain its sheer speed must’ve been inflicting upon it, Naruto wouldn’t have been surprised if it was hardened somehow, reinforced with chakra.

The skipper began to turn and readied itself for another run, never slowing down any more than it absolutely had to. Naruto twisted to see Kiba and Akamaru trying to close in, but the Nosuri seemed perfectly content to ignore the Inuzuka, at least until they cut down his support. However, when it once again began moving in a straight line, its trajectory pointed it not towards Naruto, but well to his right.

Naruto twisted his neck to see Sakura running across the sand, chasing after her horse as it galloped, riderless, away from the fighting. Though Naruto’s eyes swept the desert for Sasuke, there was no sign of him. Had something happened to him? What the hell was she doing?

“Sakura!” Naruto cried, but if the girl even heard him she didn’t respond. Instead she kept her course, and the skipper plowed forward to chase after her. When only a hundred or so yards separated them it swerved, exposing its side and giving its riders a clear firing angle – but Sakura didn’t change course. Though the skipper pointed away from the girl, its momentum continued to carry it closer. Eighty yards. Fifty.

When the skipper was no more than thirty yard from Sakura’s retreating form, Sasuke sat up, throwing off the mass of sand that had shielded him from view. His blue-black hair was streaked with gold, and two extended fingers glowed with blue lightning. He held the technique until the skipper finished its drift – until it was ten yards away at most – and fired.

A streak of lightning cut the air, and though the attack was soundless Naruto could smell the ozone even from two hundred yards away. He watched as the blue-scarfed Nosuri threw himself aside, the lightning missing his chest by mere inches.

Naruto groaned in frustration – and yet, the attack had done what it was designed to do.

Already at the end of its drift, the skipper needed another burst of wind in order to transform its remaining momentum into speed, but with Blue out of position it wasted precious seconds drifting at a speed that Naruto’s horse could’ve matched. Naruto himself was too far away to capitalize – but Inuzuka Kiba was not.

With a roar Kiba launched himself from Akamaru’s back, landing on the deck of the skipper just as Blue managed to put more wind in the sail. The skipper took off like a rocket towards Naruto as Kiba leapt for the green-scarfed Nosuri, Akamaru wheeling around to find Sasuke.

Naruto turned his horse around and spurred it to action, forcing it to run in the same direction as the skipper. It gained ground on him quickly, of course, but with Kiba causing such a ruckus, the Nosuri in the yellow scarf didn’t seem to realize that their trajectory would take them right alongside Naruto and his horse – not even when it sailed right past them, close enough to touch.

Naruto stood in his stirrups, his horse heaving beneath him. The skipper had slowed, Kiba tearing across it like a wild animal, streaks of blood painting the wooden deck in his wake. Still, the thing was unnaturally fast, and every second took it further from Naruto despite his horse’s best efforts. He placed a foot on the saddle, shifting his weight, preparing to jump.

Indecision seized him, an icy prisonof his own devising. The gap between him and the edge of the skipper’s deck, widening by the moment, seemed an endless chasm. The song of steel echoed from the battle aboard, promising enough pain and fear and violence to drown in. This was what he wanted to hurl himself into? This was the destiny he leapt for, with no care for what waited for him should he fall?

Faces flashed before him. Sakura, Sasuke, Rai. The stone visages of the old Hokage, gods surveying their creation. The clarity that raced through him was like a mouthful of hot coffee on a bitter winter’s night.

Yes, I will leap for this. This and more.

The next moment he was airborne, arms pinwheeling. The wood of the skipper raced to meet him – but though his initial burst carried him close, he bled momentum quickly. Gravity pulled him downwards, towards the golden earth, just as the skipper began to get distance.

Naruto roared and stretched out his hand, fingers just barely scraping the hull. Chakra held him to the surface as surely as if he’d been nailed there, though the sheer speed of the skipper kept him horizontal, billowing in the wake of the skippers’ passing like a flag mounted on a horse. His other armed strained against the force, until it too was touching the hull, and only then was Naruto able to pull himself bodily to the craft. Pressed up against the hull shielded him from the craft’s slipstream, and it wasn’t difficult for Naruto to haul himself up over the railing and onto the deck itself.

Chaos greeted him. Two Nosuri – Green and Orange – had Kiba pinned towards the far edge of the ship, avoiding his blasts of shearing wind as he danced along the top of the railing. Orange spun, sunlight glinting off the blade in his hand just moments before it bit deep into Kiba’s calf. The Inuzuka screamed, tumbling from the railing – but he maintained enough composure to fall towards the deck, rolling back to one knee and raising a hand to ward off his attacker. Though Orange stepped back, not willing to risk a front assault, Green charged in at Kiba’s blind spot. Kiba whirled, but slowed by his injury he couldn’t get his palm into position in time -

Naruto raced across the deck, the wooden planks beneath his feet shrieking as the force of his footsteps threatened to shatter them. Blue, still manning the sail, screamed a warning in a strange, guttural tongue, but Naruto shot past him and barreled into Green just as the Nosuri was about to crush Kiba’s throat with his fist. The two went to the ground, skipping once across the deck before Green slammed hard into the wall with a wet crack of bone.

An uncanny awareness of the battlefield rushed to fill Naruto’s head, chakra reflexively sending all five of his sense into overdrive. He could smell Kiba’s familiar scent to his left, could taste the blood and salt on the air around him. He could feel the footsteps of Orange to his right, even as the skipper groaned and shuddered from the force of its own speed. He could hear the way Orange’s blade cut through the air, wickedly sharp. A blast of wind cut across Naruto’s back, the barest edge of Kiba’s attack, and Naruto dropped to his stomach, rolling out of the line of fire. He popped to his feet, bringing his hands together in the shadow clone seal.

Another Naruto burst into existence within a thin cloud of smoke, just in time to catch Orange’s wrist. The man’s eyes widened in surprise beneath thick wrappings of cloth – but he recovered quickly, dropping the knife and snatching it deftly out of the air with his free hand.

Naruto ducked in, pivoting around his clone and dropping his torso so low that he was practically laying on the deck. One foot snapped upwards, catching Orange in the hand and sending the knife flying. It spun high into the air and over the side, lost to the desert below.

Orange roared in frustration, locking his hands together in a haymaker blow that Naruto’s clone was too slow to dodge. It burst into smoke as Naruto popped to his feet, taking advantage of Orange’s poor post-blow footwork to land several punches on his unprotected face. Orange reeled back, hands weaving seals, and the long strips of cloth wrapped around his body suddenly leapt as if they were living things, wrapping around Naruto with an unnatural strength. As the blond struggled, Orange charged in, and Naruto was unable to raise his arms to stop the man from evening the score with several savage blows to the head. Fireworks exploded in Naruto’s vision and he staggered, spinning, only keeping his feet through sheer unconscious stubbornness.

“Naruto!”

Kiba’s shout shook the cobwebs from Naruto’s brain just in time to avoid another Red pressing in from behind, having finally abandoned his position taking potshots at Sakura and Sasuke. Kiba was engaged with his own opponent, a now-recovered Green, and the two rolled across the deck like children play-wrestling – but the knives in their hands revealed the deadly seriousness of their struggle.

With two opponents in front of him now, Naruto tore his arms free from the prison of cloth and clapped his hands together to summon two more shadow clones. He would’ve loved to switch it up – a fire clone, or maybe wind – but the Nosuri were already moving forward and the shadow clone was the quickest technique in his arsenal.

Somewhere to the side a horse screamed, and the skipper swerved so sharply that one end of the craft came off the ground, titling the deck beneath him practically 45 degrees. Everyone on board began to slide – though Naruto noticed that the Nosuri were quick to stick themselves to the deck. Naruto himself slid nearly halfway down the deck before managing to arrest his momentum, and as the skipper righted itself with a heavy thud there was a crack like thunder and a flash of pain across his face.

Naruto howled as Red wheeled in the leather whip, arm beginning the next strike, but a clone threw himself into Red’s personal space and stopped his arm cold. Orange wove more hand seals, but this time he raised his hands to his lips as if holding a horn.

A battling ram of air shot from the man’s mouth, and would’ve bowled Naruto over had he not been still half-stuck to the deck. As it was, the burst of air cracked something in Naruto’s chest, and he clutched at it with one hand while the other stopped him from collapsing. Footsteps let him know that someone was charging him, and he barely managed to stand in time to deflect a punch.

Then Orange was truly on him, and blows fell around Naruto like rain. He took a step back, then another, the assault did not relent. A kick from the Nosuri’s left foot caught him in the knee, forcing it the deck, and then Orange spun into a roundhouse kick with his right foot, bouncing Naruto’s head against the floorboards.

“Naruto!” Kiba again, and this time there was an urgency to the Inuzuka’s voice that Naruto didn’t recognize. The world spun and shook, and the seemingly omnipresent sun vanished behind a sudden shadow. Naruto looked up to see Orange standing above him, raising one foot to crush Naruto’s skull as he might a beetle.

Naruto rolled, desperation giving him a speed he had never before managed to reach. He gained distance from Orange, gritted his teeth, and forced the world still with a supreme effort of will.

Red caught Naruto’s clone around the throat with his whip and yanked hard, dispelling the technique in a puff of smoke. Naruto circled, low enough to the ground that he could support his balance with his hands as he moved, until Red and Orange were both in front of him again.

It was Red who moved first, the whip snapping forward. Rather than retreating or dodging to the side Naruto imitated one of Sasuke’s favorite maneuvers, diving towards his attacker and rolling through the space between the two Nosuri. Orange’s hand flashed downwards, the telltale whistle of a knife through air – and Naruto realized with a start that even if he could grab a knife from his leg he would never raise it in time.

Salvation came through memory, and a keen awareness of the world around him. Naruto spun, hand reaching, and his fingers curled around the handle of the very throwing knife he had embedded in the mast at the start of this conflict. He yanked it free just in time to knock Orange’s knife away in a shower of sparks.

Orange stumbled aside, his footwork again suffering from his zeal to press the offensive, and Naruto whirled to chuck the knife at Red. The throw forced Red away, bending backwards until the back of his head nearly touched the deck – and for the first time since he had boarded the skipper, Naruto found himself with _time_.

His hands flew through seals and a moment later a fire clone popped into existence behind him. Orange, recognizing the threat, whipped his knife through the air towards the clone – but Naruto just barely managed to put his hand in the way. Four inches of steel slid through Naruto’s palm, and he let out the pain in a hoarse scream.

“Kiba!” He shouted, just as the clone began to move.

Orange dashed forward, trying to catch the clone before it could do any damage, but Naruto was there to meet him. He had to trust that Kiba understood the purpose of his shout, that he managed to get clear -

The clone reached the skipper’s sail and leapt into the air. A moment later, it exploded.

Maybe he couldn’t hurt the craft itself – but he didn’t need to.

The effect was instantaneous. The skipper tilted forward, hard, and its nose slammed into a dune that it otherwise would’ve glided gracefully over. Though Naruto’s feet were anchored to the deck with liberal application of chakra, the force of the crash threw him high into the air. As he tumbled head over heels through the sky, he saw that his feet were still clinging to fragments of broken wood which had shattered on impact.

Naruto tried to orient himself, but everything was spinning too quickly for him to get a handle on it. His world flashed from blue to gold and back again, again, again, so nauseatingly quickly that the only information Naruto could glean from it was that he was rapidly approaching the ground.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

He hit the ground, hard, and skipped across the sand. Once, twice, three times he bounced, each impact eliciting new agony, until finally he bled enough momentum to skidded to a stop amongst towering dunes.

He gasped, sucking air in greedily, and flailed his arms and legs. Miraculously, everything moved.

Then he heard the ragged breathing.

Naruto rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself onto his hands and knees, limbs shaking. Red lay not five feet from him, stunned but seemingly unharmed. He was taking longer to recover from the crash, but it wouldn’t be long before he managed to get up as well.

Naruto half crawled, half dragged himself towards the Nosuri. Red didn’t realize he was even there until he practically on top of the man – but then his hands went for Naruto’s face with a brutal, frantic strength. Coarse fingers crawled along his cheeks, seeking his eyes.

Naruto threw his leg over the Nosuri’s hip until he was straddling the man, and then found himself at a loss. It was only a particularly sharp burst of pain that dragged his attention down to his hand, where a Nosuri knife was still thoroughly embedded in his palm. Naruto grimaced and grabbed the bone handle, pulling the thing free with a scream.

The sight of naked steel only made Red redouble his struggles, and he managed to get a palm under Naruto’s chin, forcing the boy’s face up to the clear blue sky. Naruto grunted and stabbed downwards, but as he couldn’t see what he was aiming at the knife went wide and sunk into the sand. Naruto pulled it back, struggling against the Nosuri’s arms – but always the man held him at bay.

Panic began to flood Naruto’s mind. With the knife and the top positioning he had the advantage – for now. But already he could feel the exhaustion creeping in, could see the way his muscles trembled. Even if he could hold out, he no way of knowing how the rest of the fight was going. If he took too long, it was entirely possible that one of the Nosuri would stumble upon them, and then he would be as good as dead.

As he struggled and strained, Red continued to grasp for anything he could use, fingers scrabbling around Naruto’s face. Dirty fingernails tore furrows in Naruto’s cheeks, blood slicking his face and neck, and then – suddenly – the Nosuri’s finger slipped into Naruto’s open mouth. There was no time to think, to consider the options. Naruto bit as hard as he was able.

Blood, salty and hot, filled his mouth, and the Nosuri howled in pain and surprise. Some of the blood slipped down Naruto’s throat and he gagged, but thankfully he managed to spit the vast majority of it – along with the severed half of the man’s finger – out onto the sand. Red cringed away instinctively and Naruto was finally able to free his head from the man’s grip. Now able to properly aim, Naruto stabbed again, but somehow the Nosuri managed to catch his wrist with his intact hand hand before the blade could strike free. They stayed locked in that position, straining, every muscle trembling, for what seemed like an eternity.

It took Naruto several endless moments to realize that Red was speaking something – a string of whispered words in a language Naruto didn’t understand. It reminded him of the pidgin Kiba had spoken the night before, the language of the road. Red spoke in long, flowing sentences, rarely pausing for breath. His eyes shone with a fevered intensity.

The string of foreign words was becoming too much to handle, and so Naruto found himself mirroring it. “C’mon,” he grunted, the knife’s point descending by maybe half an inch. “C’mon, fucking...just...please...c’mon...fuck! I don’t…”

Then, all of the sudden, the strength seemed to go out of the man. His arms fell away and Naruto tumbled forward, the knife driving itself into Red’s eye with a quiet, terrifying _schlunk_.

Red kicked, a sudden spasm that put his knee into Naruto’s groin, and then lay still. Naruto spent several seconds panting in the sand before he realized he was now laying atop a dead man. He shouted – a hoarse, exhausted noise – and then rolled onto his back. The sun beat down on him, relentless.

It was not long before Kakashi’s masked face obscured his field of vision. “Oh, you’re alive,” the Jonin said, with the same tone of pleasant surprise one might use when finding an extra egg in their ramen. “Can you stand?”

Naruto swallowed. His mouth was mostly sand and grit, and the taste of blood was still prominent. “I...got him, sensei.”

Kakashi glanced over at Red’s corpse, then back to Naruto. He bent down in a deep crouch, elbows on his knees. “I can see that.”

Naruto turned his head to stare at the dead man. He didn’t look so different – though, with his face turned away, Naruto couldn’t see the knife sticking out of his eye. “He was gonna get me.”

“Yep,” Kakashi said.

“But I...I got him first.”

“Yep.”

Naruto exhaled through his nose. Every part of him hurt, even the parts he didn’t know he had, and beneath the pain there was nothing but an exhaustion that bit deep into muscle and bone. Together the two sensations filled him, leaving him with room for nothing else. “I thought it’d be different.”

Kakashi nodded. “Everyone does.” He reached out and placed a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, just for the briefest moment. Then he pulled away, as if embarrassed by the contact. “This is the life we chose, though,” he said. “Too far from home to turn back now. Am I being heard, Shinobi?”

Naruto closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. He could not make the pain and fatigue go away – could not even pretend that the were not there. All he could do was stand, and continue on despite them. “You are being heard, sensei.”

“Good.” Kakashi stretched back out to his full height, then offered Naruto a hand. Naruto took it with his uninjured hand – as much as any part of him was uninjured, at last – and his sensei lifted him up to his feet without so much as a second glance. “The good news,” he said, brushing some sand off his vest, “is that we’ve got some speed behind us now.”

Naruto looked up and saw the second skipper, sitting peacefully in the sands not far from its splintered brother. Sakura and Sasuke were hauling bodies off it while Kiba tended to Akamaru. “We know how to steer one of those things?” He asked.

“Who said anything about steering?” Kakashi asked, sounding far too excited for even Naruto’s comfort.

-ooo-

Sakura couldn’t entirely place why the walls of Sunagakure looked so large.

The rational side of her brain told her that that they were no larger than the walls of Konohagakure – smaller even, if only by a handful of feet. And yet the flat expanse of sandstone seemed to tower over her memory of her home, dwarfing her.

Perhaps it was the terrain. Though Konohagakure took great care to keep the area around its walls clear of trees, the forest was never far, always available for a quick comparison. Its presence helped keep things in perspective. Here, there was nothing for miles but desert – and, of course, the river Kahaki, which trudged ever southward. Sunagakure was built upon its slowest, widest stretch, to take better advantage of its annual flooding. The flatness only served to accentuate the height of the walls, the only vertical surface for miles.

The five of them – six, Sakura supposed, counting Akamaru, who was currently curled protectively around a fidgeting Kiba – sat cross legged in the sand, nearly in the shadow of the wall. They had not moved for hours, and spoken only occasionally. To her left, Naruto had once again caved to his boredom and begun picking at the stitches in his palm, forcing her to smack his hand away and glare at him until he mumbled a halfhearted promise not to do it again. She had done her best to patch him up following their fight with the Nosuri, but she could only do so much. She was a competent surgeon, but the healing art – the manipulation of another’s chakra flow to stimulate the body’s natural regenerative processes – had always eluded her.

Kakashi sat at the head of their little formation, staring up at the wall with a tenseness in his shoulders that looked out of place on the man, who was usually so carefree. Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, and Kiba sat a few yards behind him, ceding control to him. Sakura could see that it rankled Sasuke, to be placed in a position of such low honor, but he kept his tongue and did not challenge, or question.

Part of Sakura wished that he would question. They could not sit here forever. Far in the distance, many miles yet but drawing ever closer, was a storm the likes of which she had never before seen. A massive cloud that rose up from the ground rather than descending from the sky, swallowing the land beneath it.

Sandstorm. Sakura had heard stories of the Land of Wind’s sandstorms – how they could choke a man caught out in the open, how they could flay his skin from his bones. Some of that had to be mere exaggeration – and yet she could not calm herself, seeing that cloud on the horizon. Kakashi seemed no calmer. Had she not known the man for several months now, she might not have picked up on the tension in his posture, but she could see it now. How much longer would he continue to wait?

It was then that Subaku Temari made herself known.

The wall in front of them rumbled, sandstone bricks sliding out of the way to expose a small rectangular doorway. Sand Shinobi in fatigues and flak jackets emerged first, scanning the area to ensure that the visitors weren’t planning any kind of ambush.

It was almost eerie, looking at their dress – so similar to the Shinobi uniforms that she had grown up surrounded by, and yet subtly different. The fatigues were lighter, a not-quite-white, with slightly more open sleeves. Their flak jackets had less pronounced collars and far more pronounced shoulders, but most importantly were khaki rather than green – the coloring had led to the pejorative “tan” being adopted amongst many of Konohagakure’s military personnel. As more Shinobi emerged from within the wall, Sakura saw that many of them wore hats with broad, flat bills, to keep the sun out of their eyes.

Only when the Sand Shinobi had formed a loose semicircle around the area did Subaku Temari emerge from hiding. She was short, her skin deeply tanned like many of her men, and her dirty-blonde hair was pulled into four spiky pigtails. She wore body armor similar to her men, but sleeker and more form fitting.

Truthfully, she looked like a soldier. Were it not for the number of piercings – and the golden chain strung between her nose and ear – Sakura would not have identified her as a princess.

Temari strode forward until she was only a few feet away from Kakashi, then pressed her hands together and summoned a raised flat platform from the sand beneath her. Sitting upon it, she could command height over the Leaf Shinobi still seated on the ground. When she spoke, she said only, “Hatake Kakashi.”

Kakashi inclined his head. “Subaku-hime.”

They had debated at length on how best to address the princess, when they spoke. Kiba had been adamantly against using honorifics at all, cringing at the idea of giving respect to an enemy, and Sasuke hadn’t been much better. It was only at Sakura’s insistence that Kakashi had agreed to use -hime, the old word for “princess.” In the east the term had long since faded from use, replaced with the more multipurpose -sama, but the cultures of the west clung more stubbornly to old formalities, and for a citizen of the Land of Wind, -hime was the expected form of address when referring to the daughter of the Kazekage. Surely it couldn’t hurt to show deference to their hosts?

If the honorific bought them any good will with Temari, however, it didn’t show on the woman’s face. Her expression was flat, controlled, almost bored – but her eyes never left Kakashi, not even for a moment. “You arrived just in time,” she said, gesturing to the storm that raged many miles behind them. “That’s quite a fierce storm on your tail.”

“Our timing is indeed fortunate,” Kakashi agreed, and it was strange to hear him being genuinely pleasant, without a note of mocking in his voice. “We would welcome the chance to shelter within your walls.”

“Ah,” Temari said. “Perhaps.”

The word hung on the air. Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto exchanged looks – Naruto’s face plastered with bewilderment, Sasuke’s with grim recognition.

“We’ve traveled quite a long way, on your insistence,” Kakashi said. “But if you no longer have need of Konohagakure’s support, we’re more than happy to turn around and return home.”

Temari nodded. “You may be able to make it to shelter before the storm arrives,” she said. “Though, were I betting woman, I would not wager on that.”

“I see,” Kakashi said, somehow still sounding as if they were having an amicable chat over tea. “You understand then, that every second counts.”

Temari lifted a hand, fingers toying with one of the earrings that dangled from her ear. “I fully intend on letting you through the wall,” she said, “provided you speak honestly and openly with me.”

“Well, I suppose that would depend on what you wanted to discuss.”

Sakura was pretty sure she could guess. Kakashi’s exploits during the last war between the lands of Fire and Wind, and it hadn’t taken long to learn who Temari’s mother was. Sure enough, the next words out of Temari’s mouth were “fourteen years ago you killed my mother. Reishi Yoshino. You will tell me why.”

There was no easy way to respond to this question, even when one knew it was coming. Were Sakura in Kakashi’s position, she might’ve taken a moment to assess the situation, determine how best to proceed.

Kakashi, by contrast, started speaking the moment Temari shut her mouth. “Well, when two geopolitical entities hate each other very much-”

One of Temari’s soldiers, a tall, broad shouldered man with purple eyes, stepped forward. His hand gripped the hilt of the sword slung across his hip so tightly that the knuckles turned white. Temari held up a hand, and the man froze in place – but the glare he leveled at Kakashi burned.

“You joke?” Temari asked, after a moment. Her eyes flashed with fire. “You think I won’t let the storm take you?”

Kakashi shrugged, and Sakura bemoaned that she could only see the man’s back. He had every one of their lives in his hands, and she couldn’t even figure out if he was taking any of this seriously. “Well, frankly,” he said, “I don’t think you will. If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t have come out here to interrogate me. You would’ve just riddled us with holes from the top of the wall.”

Temari took a moment to breathe, to master herself. Her eyes closed, and when they opened again they were calm as still water. “I phrased my question poorly,” she said, “when I asked you why you killed my mother. You did not merely kill her, after all.”

Sakura swallowed, looking to Sasuke. The Uchiha seemed desperate to speak to her, to say something, and yet he dared not.

“You dragged her body through the streets of my village,” Temari said, her voice curiously flat and devoid of emotion. “You strung her up along my father’s palace, and stood by while the crows ate her eyes. When a Shinobi...or a mere citizen...stepped forward to cut her down, you cut them down instead. And so we could only watch as her corpse was defiled. As she lost any chance to find peace on the river.”

Without eyes, how could one navigate the river that ferried the dead between this life and the next? It was a strange belief, and yet Sakura supposed all beliefs were strange, particularly where they concerned the proper handling of one’s dead.

This time, Kakashi did take a moment to consider his words before he spoke. “My response was...in poor taste,” he said, finally. “If we are to be allies here, I owe it to you to be more forthcoming.” He glanced over at the purple-eyed Shinobi. “If you would tell him to stand down, I’d greatly appreciate it. He’s making my students nervous.”

It was only when he said it that Sakura realized how tense she was – every muscle straining, preparing to leap into the fight at a moment’s notice. Sasuke, Naruto, and Kiba looked no better – even Akamaru’s fur stood on end, his muzzle locked in a silent snarl.

For the first time since she sat down, Temari looked away from Kakashi, to meet the eyes of her soldier. “Daimaru,” she said, and when she spoke to him some of the imperious authority bled from her voice, leaving her sounding much more human. “This is my battle.”

Daimaru straightened and pulled his hand from his sword – but he did not step back.

Kakashi nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Thank you,” he said to Temari. “Now, given our tight schedule, I suppose I should keep this brief. How much do you know of the events surrounding the war?”

“I am the daughter of the Kazekage. I know my history, and my politics.”

“Excellent,” Kakashi said, “Then I will summarize only for the benefit of my less scholarly student.”

Naruto rolled his eyes, but at least he didn’t try to argue.

“The war did not begin between our counties,” Kakashi began. “At first, it involved only the lands of Fire and Lightning. Kumogakure had, during the Third Great War, seized control of several iron mines along Fire’s northern border. The Sixth Hokage decided that it was high time we got them back.

“Of course, in this era of Shinobi, it is rare that two of the five great powers wage war without the interference of the others. It was not long before Sunagakure got involved on the side of Lightning, as...well, for many reasons, but mostly because our two villages enjoy taking any chance to antagonize the other.” Kakashi looked up at Temari. “If I’m not too bold in saying so, Subaku-hime.”

Temari inclined her head. “You are oversimplifying…but I can hardly say you are wrong.”

“Despite being attacked on two fronts,” Kakashi continued, “Konohagakure quickly gained the upper hand over Sunagakure forces. It was not long before were within the walls of this very village, and an end to the war’s western theater seemed imminent. The problem was that the other front, against Kumogakure, had stalled. We were not losing ground, but were no closer to taking the mines that had begun the conflict.

“It was clear amongst Konohagakure’s military leadership that more manpower was required. We need an ally, and we had one waiting in Kirigakure – who, if you’ll remember your lessons, had signed a mutual defense pact with us in the years following the Fourth Great War. Unfortunately, the terms upon which Kirigakure was obligated to help us were...limited. The Mizukage was not eager to spill the blood of his men, and declared that he would not lift a finger unless we were first attacked by the only remaining player in this little drama...the Land of Earth.”

Temari narrowed her eyes, leaning forward. How much of this was new to her, Sakura wondered. She did not seem like the type of person who would leave her mother’s death unexplored for so many years, but even a Kazekage’s daughter had limits to her reach.

Kakashi leaned forward to meet her, as if the two were not merely having a conversation, but circling one another on the field of battle. “So the Hokage and his advisors concocted a strategy. They sent some of their most elite Shinobi...and I hope I don’t seem too conceited by including myself in this number...to the front lines with a very specific mission.

“See, you remember what I did to your mother very clearly. But what you likely don’t remember is that while I was here, doing that, other Leaf Shinobi were in the demilitarized zones, toppling shrines. Burning temples. Violating sacred ground, spitting in the face of thousands of years of tradition. We were, in short, carrying out a coordinated campaign of violating cultural norms.”

Something akin to realization flashed through Temari’s eyes. Her lips mouthed the word, “Iwagakure.”

“All with a very specific purpose in mind,”Kakashi said. “To scare the elite of Iwagakure. To force them to take the field against us. We believed that that Tsuchikage – as traditional and honor-bound a Shinobi as you will ever meet – would not stand for the mockery we were making of unspoken rules of war.”

Temari made the connection mere moments after Sakura herself did. “But Iwagakure never joined the war.”

Kakashi nodded. “They did not. And eventually, we were forced to concede the mines to Lightning’s control. We got a little territory in exchange but…” he shrugged. “The war is widely considered a failure.”

Silence.

Sakura was supernaturally aware of the sandstorm now. She knew – knew with every fiber of her being – that the time it would take to reach them was measured in hours. And yet every second that passed, Temari staring at Kakashi as if she would like nothing more than to watch his head spontaneously combust, she felt herself growing more and more anxious.

The storm would be here soon. Kakashi knew that. When did he decide enough was enough? That their lives weren’t worth the chance that Temari might be sincere about letting them inside?

She tried not to think about the chance that their lives wouldn’t ever be worth more than that chance – that Kakashi would happily keep them here until the sandstorm flayed them, just for the chance of being granted access to Sunagakure during a mourning. This is what it meant to be Shinobi. This is what it meant to be the empty vessel.

Finally, Temari stood. Outwardly her expression was nothing but calm, and yet even Sakura, so unpracticed at understanding the nuances of the people around her, could see the emotions that raged just beneath the surface.

“Come then,” Temari said, her voice thick with something Sakura could not identify. “Today, I extend to you my shelter. Tomorrow, you will make me Kazekage.”


End file.
